Ideas for 'Play Activities' for school-age-children who have autism?

OK, I am going to give you a smattering of activities that I have used over the years that you can adapt to your needs, if you like them. I used them for a variety of different groups of kids, but mostly Pre-K and ASD, either really little kids or very delayed kids. I write goals and objectives for play as well as academics because with autistic kids, these are things they are working on. Keeps me organized, too.

Goal 1 is a management goal so that staff can see the concepts they will be working on during the activity. This will help them plan each activity, with teaching behavior in mind. The key to getting positive behavior is to constantly praise kids for doing the right thing and using it as proximity praise. They also enjoy role playing.

Goal 1: The student will be able to interact appropriately when doing an activity in close proximity to each other.

Objective A. The student will be able to tell the difference when a bump or slight injury is accidental or if the peer meant to do it.

Objective B: The student will quietly wait his turn to get materials and walk quietly to his station.

Objective C: When there is not enough items for each student to have one, the student will be able to request an item from a peer, be able to wait until the peer is done .

Objective D: When asked to share, the student will be able to tell a peer, "Just a minute, please,” and give the item to the peer when done.

Goal 2. The student will be able to independently use a variety of art tools to apply paint or other materials to a piece of paper in a comparatively meaningful way.

Activity - Provide the students with a variety of different things to use as paint brushes such as toothbrushes, cotton swabs, toothpicks and pipe cleaners. Let them use them to paint pictures and talk about what kinds of textures the different objects left on their paintings. Butcher paper is great for this activity.

Goal 3: The student will be able to initiate shapes creatively and then imitate simple shapes from a card or a teacher or peer example. Shaving cream also works nicely, but you would want to set it up as a different station than the painting station.

Goal 4: The student will be able to explore different textures by pulling, tearing, cutting or manipulating a variety of textured materials to include string, foil, newspaper, wrapping paper, paper bags, etc. You get the idea. They can also make things.

Goal 5: The student will be able to imitate a variety of hand, foot and facial expressions in response to the expression he or she see from a peer, adult or magazine. Make this fun and use bodies too! Statue maker is a fun game for this as well as Red Light Green light, only they have to freeze exactly like a peer they see.

I have tons of others, but you catch my drift.