Early Learner Skills

All children, with or without autism, progress through a series of developmental levels as they master new skills. These stages of development are observed in Imitation, Attention and Cooperation. Many parents have found it helpful to become familiar with these stages as a way of identifying their child's current level of development and as an aid to planning future goals.

Most of these developmental stages are common to both children with autism and typically developing children. The teaching activities described here, however, are specifically adapted to the learning styles of children with autism.

Here are some of the activities that you could do with your child:

1. Matching activities: Basically, you will have two identical pictures or items and you will get your child to match the identical pictures or items. This is build child’s cooperation as well as the child’s attention.

2. Puzzles: You will need to prepare interlocking puzzles and maybe start by doing one piece at a time with child, then slowly increase the pieces of puzzle.

3. Non-verbal imitation: The child will imitate the activities that you do. Basically, you can say ‘Do this’ and you clap your hands. The child will need to imitate you. The purpose of this activity is to increase their imitation skills and their attention level. Eventually, you could increase the number of non-verbal actions with the child and it will be really fun when you see them trying to imitate all the actions that you do! This can be done as a circle time activity with other kids.

Hope you find these activities useful to you!

Written by

Jerusha Jaffery

Consultant, EAP Malaysia.