Month: January 2019

An idea that came up at the final meeting of the preschool placement, was the idea of having a sensory box. Our son likes to chew things alot and puts pretty much everything in his mouth, and he likes the feel of things, in particular the reversible sequins. He loves moving them back and forth.

Preschool suggested having a box of sensory items that was readily available to him when he needed sensory relief.

For his birthday in July last year, I made up a box of items I picked up on Amazon and eBay and also some bits and pieces I picked up from Home Bargains. You don’t need to spend alot, I didn’t. I put them in a gift bag and he loved it! I done the same at Christmas and will do the same for his birthday this year.

Here are a few ideas:

Our carer’s centre ran a Lego Therapy course tailored specifically for ASD. I was intrigued by this, so put my name down to attend.

It was ran by a lovely woman who has set up her own company doing this. I thoroughly enjoyed the course, who wouldn’t enjoy a morning of Lego!

Our son wasn’t interested in Duplo, in fact I have just recently sold the 3 sets he had on eBay as they were brand new and never looked at. I am very keen to get him interested in Lego as everyone loves Lego.

The course told us how it can improve their focus and help with their imagination, something that people with autism struggle with.

Game ideas:

• Make a Lego target for Nerf guns to hit off
• Spot the difference – make 2 shapes/pictures with a difference in one and find the difference between them
• Spot the difference – take a photograph of a shape/picture then make it differently and spot what the difference is
• Make your own instructions – take photos on the iPad to incorporate the iPad into play with Lego
• Make 2 identical boxes of Lego pieces, but have one piece missing from a box, engage by saying “your blue piece is missing, would you like mine”

After discussing game ideas, we were split into groups of 3 and asked to name ourselves:

1. Engineer – the person with the instructions who tells the supplier what brick is needed
2. Supplier – the person with the Lego pieces who gives them to the builder
3. Builder – the person who puts the pieces together

We then had to work together to make the Lego items, in our group we had a house, car, dog, table and chairs to make.

I started as the builder then moved on to being the engineer. It was really difficult to describe the bricks to the supplier:

• Flat white one row four dots
• Thick green two rows six dots
• Blue four dots on top and slant to the left

Try this – it’s not as easy as you think it will be. But we managed it, and it showed us how difficult it can be following instructions from descriptions just like our children do.

I bought Elf on the Shelf a few years ago when I was in New York but I never used him the year I got him. The more I thought about it, I didn’t think our son would understand what was happening, so I put him away and we got him out this year.

The concept of Elf on the Shelf, is that Santa sends the elf to our house on the 1st December to watch the kids and he reports back to Santa on Christmas Eve, but each night when the kids sleep, the elf gets up to mischief! This involves parents trying to think of 24 things for the elf to get up to – thankfully there are a million ideas on Pinterest!! The kids are not allowed to touch the elf as this removes the magic.

I know that our son would struggle a bit with this concept, so we altered it slightly and made it our own. He arrived the morning after the Christmas tree went up – 9th December. I found a message board to use:

Elf on the Shelf Writable Board

The morning he arrived, he sat beside the tree and I just wrote, “Hello, Santa sent me to visit you”. Our son just looked at him, not really bothering with him. The next morning we hid him in the cupboard with the DVD’s. When our son got up, we said “Where is the elf?” He then started to look for him!

He found him, then put him back under the tree where he was. We continued to do this until Christmas day. The elf was hiding in the Christmas tree, on top of a photo frame, in the fridge sleeping in his yogurts……… He is supposed to go back to Santa on Christmas Eve, but we kept him and put him on our son’s presents on Christmas morning as if the Elf had brought them. It worked out well and hopefully next year will be even better.