Social Skills Activities for Children with Autism
AutismTeachingStrategies.com
This same resource in German: 45 Gefühlswortkarten
Joel Shaul, LCSW
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Here are some other free resources to help children with autism to learn about feelings and emotions.
Paper Fortune Tellers for Feelings
Self-Control Channel Changer PowerPoint Text Option Download
Self-Control Channel Changer Boomcard version
“Control Remoto” para temas de conversación
Remote control channel changer, Hebrew translation
Your comments on these resources are most welcome, and often helpful. Click HERE to send an email.
Paper Fortune Tellers for Conversation Topics, etc.
Head Outline Sheets for Other People’s Interests
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Quick and easy method to help children with autism to learn interests of other peopleChildren with autism spectrum disorders, or children whose knowledge of peers is affected by isolation, anxiety or intellectual disability, benefit from colorful and concrete learning materials when we are helping them learn about other people. Whether you are working with one child or a whole room full of kids, you really should try this social skills learning activity. It is quick to set up. I give you PowerPoint templates and you just copy and paste images onto them, add some text, and you are ready to go. This social skills activity is screen-based, and many children seem to never get tired of looking at screens. There are options to print out drawing worksheets as well.
I hope you enjoy enjoy this activity.
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Children with autism spectrum disorder often struggle to understand how to interrupt other people in a tactful manner. Children with ASD’s may have strong interests they feel compelled to share. They may find it very hard to interpret the social cues that indicate that another person might be occupied, preoccupied, or social engaged with another person.
Children on the autism spectrum do often have a good grasp of how computers work. When we are helping children to develop insight and social skills associated with interrupting, it is really helpful to use a certain computer-based metaphor – buffering.
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In this blog post you can download puzzle piece drawing sheets that set up a variety of great activities for your group or class.
In this engaging set of activities, children explore how they all “fit together” as a group or a class even though they are all different.
The download provides a variety of puzzle sheets. You can either cut them out, or not, depending on how much prep time you have.
The completed, cut-out puzzle pieces can be fitted together by the children on the floor or on the wall. It also makes an attractive and meaningful wall display.
You can introduce the activity using words something like this:
“When we are part of a group, we have to learn how we all fit together. Fitting together well means knowing how you are like the other people and how you are different from them.”
I hope you enjoy this social skills activity for children with (and without) autism.
Your comments on these resources are most welcome, and often helpful. Click HERE to send an email.
Here are some other free activities to help two or more children to learn about each other and connect with each other.
Learning about Others with Google Street View
Paper Fortune Teller for Playing & Hanging Out Skills
Green Zone Venn Diagram Worksheet
To download the PowerPoint, find the link at the top of this post.
Children with autism spectrum disorders usually face enormous difficulties figuring out what to say in diverse social situations. When we are helping such children in counseling, speech sessions and in the classroom, we need to provide them with engaging activities to explore what other people are up to, what other people are thinking, and how to begin conversations based on other people’s interests and circumstances.
Over a period of years I put together a 100 diverse photos that work well for conversation practice. Children really love looking at the pictures and trying to think of something to say.
I put a lot of interesting animated features into this… anything to keep kids engaged in work that is very challenging for them.
Free social skills games & activities, communication / conversation skills for kids with ASD
Free social skills games & activities, social interaction skills for kids with ASD
Free social skills games & activities, emotional regulation skills for kids with ASD
Your comments on these resources are most welcome, and often helpful. Click HERE to send an email.
Update – In addition to the resources shown on this page, I now have a large collection of teletherapy resources, all adaptable for office-based and classroom instruction. Click HERE to access teletherapy resources and Boom Cards.
Many young people have persistent problems with anxiety, sadness, anger and other upsetting emotions. To maintain engagement in counseling and psycho-education, we need to provide novel approaches and introduce some levity whenever possible.
To check out a dozen other paper fortune tellers, on diverse social skills themes, please click here.
For a summary and links to all the free CBT materials on my website, please click here.
1. Introduce some basics concerning the connection between automatic negative thoughts and negative emotions. I suggest you do this by viewing , with children, this very short video I made:
2. Working in pairs, and taking turns, person number one says, “Spell your name.” For each letter, the child holding the Fortune Teller manipulates the device back and forth.
3. Person number two is then shown the two options appearing on the inner triangles. Person one says, “Pick which one you want.” You can see photos of this farther down on this page.
4. Person one opens up the innermost petals, where four options appear. He tells person two, “Pick A, B, C or D.” Person one reads the option selected. If the option read is a negative thought, person two has to tell how to deal with such thoughts. If the option selected is a positive thought, person two must describe a time when he needed to use such a thought to solve a problem.
I really enjoyed creating these paper devices. Don’t be afraid to try folding them. Here is an illustrated guide to folding them.
My best wishes for your work with children,
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Children with autism spectrum disorders can find it very difficult to know what to say to their peers. Children with ASD tend to fall back on their own preferred topics.
Here are some activities to increase awareness of various things that other people find interesting to talk about. The activities employ the thumbs-up “like” symbol, which is very familiar to most children as an indicator of what pleases another person.
1. How Interesting Is It? topic list [fragment shown below].
This is a list of ninety different conversation topics. You read them out loud to children so they can rate how interesting they are.
2. How Interesting Is It? rating sheet [shown below].
Children move a chip between 0 and 4 based on how interesting they think a particular conversation topic might be for another person.
3. How Interesting Is It? picture worksheets [examples shown below]
This set of five worksheets is to help children who need more practice.
“Who has ever seen the ‘like’ icon on Facebook or other places online? What does it mean? It means someone likes something that they see or hear online. Some things online get lots of ‘likes’. Some get few, or none.
When you are talking to other people, you might also be scoring ‘likes’ – in their minds. Or you might not be scoring ‘likes’ at all. When you are ‘interesting,’ it is something like scoring ‘likes’. When you are not interesting, or boring, you are not scoring ‘likes’.
You can get much better at scoring ‘likes’ in conversation by paying close attention to what you are saying and what the other person might find to be interesting. Your own words might seem really interesting to your own ears. Maybe the other person will like your words too. But, depending on the topic and what the other person finds interesting, your words might not score any ‘likes’ at all.
Here are some activities to help you get better at scoring ‘likes’ when you talk.
1. How Interesting Is It? rating sheet. I will read you a number of different conversation topics. For each one, you have to take a guess on how interesting, on a scale of 0 to 4, it might be to the other person. Place your chip on the number that you think shows how interesting it is to the other person, not you. [Note to teacher: alter the wording as you read through the list, to clarify and specify as you see fit.]
2. How Interesting Is It? picture worksheets. For the Zero sheet, pick out some things from the list that might be uninteresting to most kids – or things that you think of yourself. Write them down on the sheet and draw small pictures. For the 1, 2, 3 and 4 sheets, write and draw things that kids your age might find more interesting.”
Note to teacher/therapist: These activities work best when you add role play practice. Select a number of topics that would rate a 3 or 4 with most children. You play the role of the other child in the conversation. Then, assign the children to converse with you on these selected topics.
I hope you find these materials enjoyable and useful.
Your comments on these resources are most welcome, and often helpful. Click HERE to send an email.