Our autism homeschool theme this March is BIRDS 🐓🦆🐦🦅🐧
Little Star chose this theme herself. In a monthly BRAINSTORMING zoom chat, some friends and I discussed giving our special kids more control and autonomy. Encouraging her to choose her own theme is one of them!
STARTER TABLE
In this photo, we lay out a starter table of books and theme related objects for her to explore at leisure. She already absconded with the ducks and took them to bed last night.
We don’t have a huge collection of booka as we used to rely on local libraries for reading material. Thanks to lockdown, however, all libraries are closed since October 2020. Super sucks but what can we do! I still managed to scrounge for a small collection, including some adult bird watching books. Youtube is also an incredible source for read-aloud books and educational videos, which we use extensively.
BEYOND OBJECT-ORIENTED THEME ACTIVITIES
Last night, I spent hours planning out our homeschool BIRD activities. These are not supplementary to our online curriculum. They are standalone, holistic activities addressing various areas of a special child’s development. Including the need to have fun and enjoy playing with people!
The thing with our autastic kids is that their play can be very object-oriented / centric. As parents planning activities for our kids, we can fall into the same trap, placing priority on objects and academics.
This might not a problem for a neurotypical child, who is naturally motivated to be social. A neurodiverse, autistic child however, might be wary, even fearful of social interaction and communication. Not necessarily because they don’t want to, but maybe because they do not know how to, can’t cope, find it too unpredictable, or have had stressful engagements with people in the past.
It is important for us as their play partners to give them lots of opportunities to engage with us in supportive, fun, social activities. Where the objects are the side show, and we are the centre.
CREATING THE FUN
And here is the hardest part. It is actually easy for me to come up with learning, educational activities. There are so many resources online. All we need to do is look up a topic, and we are flooded with information.
Games that are fun and motivating for Little Star is the challenging one. Am therefore grateful to have my small group zooms with a few friends. As well as our monthly Special Parent Support Group, where we are in the midst of a series of GAME BRAINSTORMING sessions in 4 social developmental areas. The tribe can be helpful, and seeing everyone grow together since LohZ and I started this support group last year is inspiring.
So when I sat down to plan for the month last night, there were already a couple of games in our treasury thanks to the zooms. And they gave my brain a much needed kick to think of even more fun, socially engaging activities for Little Star and I to do together.
Looking forward to share them with you over the coming weeks!
* Find out more about the Social Developmental Model at the ATCA website. It is available for download: https://autismtreatmentcenter.org/the-son-rise-program-social-curriculum/
Story of a Little Star 