As the festive season is around the corner, schools in the UAE will be off for three weeks. It might be an exciting time for many people but for some parents it may be difficult to deal with routine change, keeping their children entertained while maintaining their academic skills. The Doris Duan-Young Autism Center (DDY) provides many strategies on how to keep children busy during school holidays while developing and generalizing their academic skills.
Research shows that “multiple exemplars” helps the acquisition and generalization of skills. Multiple exemplars of different activities during the holiday can help children develop and maintain their language and academic skills (Cooper, Heron, Heward, 2007). The activities will be individualized to each child’s skills and interests. DDY supports the generalization of their clients’ skills to home by providing families with extra materials that can be practiced at home.
Integrating arts and crafts activities in a child’s day can keep children entertained while developing and maintaining their different skills. Arts and crafts activities like cutting, pasting, drawing and coloring can help children develop the following skills:
• Fine motor skills
• Eye hand coordination
• Children’s vocabulary can be developed by encouraging children to point or label the different items in their arts and crafts projects
• Children can practice following a written instructions related to arts projects
Worksheets is one of the structured activities that can be implemented in a child’s day. Worksheets will be a continuation of the child’s mastered academic targets and will be individualized to each child’s skill level and age. It is important to foster independence by providing easy worksheets.
• Name writing activities
• Math worksheets
• Tracing and copying worksheets can be practiced to maintain the writing and tracing skills
Academic and language development can be practiced in a natural and unstructured setting throughout the child’s day and can help in the generalization of the skills (Sundberg and Partington, 1998).
• Cooking is very important in developing the numeracy, language skills reading skills and fractions
• Family games is very important to generalize language skills, numeracy skills and following rules
• Watching a movie: While watching a movie, caregivers can comment on different emotions, actions, features, functions and items in a movie
Parents having children of determination might find it difficult to transition their children from free play to structured activities. DDY recommends several
antecedent interventions (preventative) strategies that help parents avoid problem behavior (Cooper, Heron, Heward, 2007).
Visual Schedule: A visual schedule helps children have a structure for their day and gives them a sense of expectation and safety.
Visual Rules: Visual rules are the rules of appropriate sitting on the table and in circle time when attending to the different academic tasks. The visual rules come in different forms (i.e., pictorial or written) depending on the age and skill level of the child.
Choices: Choices is important in giving children a sense of empowerment and control. Children will have choices in selecting the worksheets, arts and crafts activities, books, and/ or toys.
Variety of activities: The activities will be varied and mixed between easy and difficult demands.
Positive reinforcement: Positive reinforcement is the presentation of a stimulus after a response that increases the future frequency of that response. Positive reinforcement can be done through a token board and/or verbal praise (Cooper, Heron, Heward, 2007)
• Token Board: It is a system where children will earn a token (i.e., stickers, happy faces, checks, pictures, thumbs up, etc.). When collecting a certain number of tokens (3,5,10,15,20, etc.), children can get their favorite toy, activity or snack (Cooper, Heron, Heward, 2007).
• Verbal Praise: Parents can provide their children with different verbal praise after completing a task.
For more information, visit www.ddyautismcenter.com
