Preparing Your Child for the Holidays!

School's out! Marking the beginning of a packed month of family outings and fun activities with your children! That also means many changes in your child's daily routine as he/she won't be going to a centre for therapy or to school as usual. You'll also be seeing a lot more of your children this season so here are a few tips to make the most of your time with them, and to prepare them for good changes so that they too may enjoy the holidays as much as possible! =) 

A Holiday Schedule. 

That's right. Like all other Daily To Do's, children with autism also need to be prepped for the next holiday agenda on the list. In one of our previous videos, we showed you how you can use a daily schedule for your child. In the same way, you may create a Holiday Schedule! This is where you print out pictures that best describe what you will be doing during the holidays with your child. It is a good idea to prepare pictures that you can use daily. Take the collection of pictures below as an example: 

If you are going to spend a week at the beach with the whole family, these pictures can be used on your child's daily schedule for that one week. Just arrange the pictures according to order of sequence and remember to remove each picture once that activity is over. Pictures are stuck on a lightweight board using velcro, making it easy to stick on and pull off at any time. 

A Calendar

Sometimes having a visual calendar also helps your child know where he/she is at in the holiday month. You can make a simple calendar that looks like the one below, and get your child to mark off each day as it passes. This is also a good way to subtly teach children the value of time. 

In our next blog post, we will be discussing the use of a Social Story for the holidays. So watch this space! http://www.eapmalaysia.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-use-visual-schedule.html