Interesting Games, Sports, And Therapeutic Activities For Children With Autism

Ranjeet KumarReviewed by Mr. Ranjeet Kumar Sr. Audiologist, Speech Therapist & Cochlear Implant Specialist, BASLP on May 4th, 2020 written by Editorial Team

Fun activities, games can excite anyone. But Games and Activities For Children With autism spectrum can help your child in the areas of independence, choice-making, life skills, social interactions, academics, fine motor skills, and more.

Keeping this in mind, we have mentioned some interesting autism games and activities for autistic children. They are super easy for the child and parents to learn!

If you need any assistance or have a question about Children With Autism, you can consult our HearingSol experts with your problem, feel free to call us on +91-9327901950. We are always here to help you.

Some activities are fortunate enough to be a critical part of the treatment team for children with special needs. These types of children want special care, everyone can’t understand the feeling of acoustic kids.

Kids enjoy the game and different toys so we can treat him in different ways such as completing the tasks of building blocks, working a puzzle, and drawing pictures.

Here in this article, we are going to discuss games, activities & sports for autistic children.


Games For Autistic Children

Here are some great games ideas. These games are easy and you can learn about these interactive activities by watching the youtube video.

  • Games to play with Paper Plates
  • Fun With Puzzles
  • Top games Ideas using Therapy Balls
  • Game to Inspire Your Child to Look at You
  • A hat game to Increase Attention Span

Videos of all games are available on youtube.


Activities For Children With Autism (Birth to Three Years)

Here are a few fun activities for autistic toddlers-

1. Scented Bubbles

This is a very easy and interesting activity for kids. Blowing bubbles can be a fun sensory experience and it also works on oral motor skills.

This activity helps to work on joint attention with others and exaggerating your own reaction.

2. Finger Painting

Finger painting for children with autism

It is also an interesting activity, kids really enjoy it and love it. Painting can help children learn about colors and give knowledge of different colors.

When he touches the colors and plays with it provides an opportunity to discover new gestures through touch and it can help reduce the chance of sensory sensitivity through exposure.

3. Box o’ beans

Box o’ beans

For this activity, you fill a large plastic tub with sensory beads or dried beans and place small toys throughout and have the child place his/ her hands in the box to pull out desired objects. He feels the enjoy and play with it.

4. Songs and Poems

Kids love poems, rhymes, or the repetition of verses in a song. By makeup, songs to teach kids how to dress or feeds themselves.

You can run the songs and observe the behavior of children, he enjoys the whole things of songs. You can add some activities with songs like jumping and hopping.


Therapeutic Activities For Children with Autism

1. Provide Maze Books, Word Searches, Eye Spy Puzzles

Visuals skills are a very important part to improve an autistic child. Let’s make it a fun activity. Many fun games are available online but working on paper/pencil tasks helps in building coordination of the hands and visual perceptual skills.

The eyes learn to work together. Visual scanning and problem-solving skills also improve.

2. Visual Schedules

Picture Schedule for outlining the steps of a task is helpful as many children with autism are visual learners. Even everyday activities such as taking a shower, eating, studying, and playing should be displayed in a picture schedule.

So, take pictures of a task, print and laminate them and number them so that children know exactly what comes next. You can ask your child to put them in order.

3. Sensory and calm-down bottles for Sensory Interaction

These activities are very simple for kids and it helps in the improvement of kids. Given below are some of the sensory activities for autism:

A. Minion Sensory Bottle

This Bottle is cute and sure to entertain your kids.

minion sensory bottle

B. Calming find Game

Kids are excited about it to find hidden objects in these neat bottles.

Calming find Game

C. Rainbow Button Sensory Bottle

Be fun with any kind of Buttons in an interesting way.

Rainbow Button Sensory Bottle

D. Glittery Calm Down Bottles

Bottles fill with glitter colors, this seems like a great way to calm down.

Glittery Calm Down Bottles

E. Weather Sensory Bottles

Learn about different kinds of weather in a beautiful way.

Weather sensory Bottles

F. Color Mixing Sensory Bottles

Color mixing is also a cool thing to do.

Color mixing sensory bottles

4. Add Brain Breaks or Yoga Activities

Difficult assignments and tests need the mental involvement of a child. You must ensure that your child is taking a break at school.

So, in these types of stressful situations, Deep breathing and calming strategies can help your child. You can find many brain break exercises and breathing exercises on the internet.


Best Toys for Kids With Autism

1. 12-Sided Fidget Cube

12-Sided Fidget Cube

When the child is stressed and does not have a parent or teacher to calm him down, a fidget toy might help. It helps in relieving stress, reducing anxiety, and relax children with autism. Get it from here (India, USA).

Features:

  • Made of high quality, non-toxic polycarbonate, and is safe for the kids to use.
  • It consists of 12 gadgets.
  • Has joystick that moves 360 degrees.

2. cHu-buDDy Pendants

cHu-buDDy Pendants

Children with autism who have trouble with oral sensory processing and indulge in inappropriate chewing, licking, and biting can use Chubuddy pendants.

It provides the necessary oral stimulation that children with oral sensory issues need. You can read the review and purchase it from here.

Features:

  • Made of a high-quality material that’s free from lead, latex, plastic compounds, and other non-toxic materials.
  • It comes attached to a breakaway clasp necklace that keeps them close to the child.
  • Blend in with your child’s style when worn as fashion accessories.

3. See & Spell Learning Toy

See & Spell Learning Toy

The toy focuses on the pictorial representation of the words and also the language part. It acts as a basic educational toy that teaches spelling to the child.

It helps to improve sight-reading, language skills, and fine motor skills. Find more detail about the product here (USA, India)

Features:

  • It has 50+ colorful wooden letters that fit into the 8 two-sided cutout boards to spell three- and four-letter words – complete a puzzle to spell a word.
  • Exceptional quality and value.
  • It fits into one compact wooden storage case.

4. Edushape Easy-Grip Soft Foam Sensory Puzzle Blocks

Edushape Easy-Grip Soft Foam Sensory Puzzle Blocks

Read the review and other product information

It engages the child’s sense of touch to teach them about shapes, colors, and texture. The puzzle helps improve the child’s spatial, logical, and reasoning skills.

Features:

  • Puzzle blocks are made of soft foam are easy to use and safe too.
  • Lightweight blocks.
  • Blocks have a dotted texture, which stimulates the sense of touch as the child plays with them.
  • The different colors boost the imagination and visual sensory development of the child.

5. Gonge Riverstone

Gonge Riverstone

It is great for improving coordination and balance. Children can learn to judge the distance, steepness, and timing of movement, and jump and balance confidently. Get more information here (India, USA)

Features:

  • It contains 3 large stones and 3 small stones.
  • The toy-set contains six Gonge stones.
  • Made of non-toxic material and can be used on hard surfaces, indoors or outdoors.
  • It has a rubber rim which prevents slipping.

Sports For Kids With Autism

1. Swimming

Swimming therapy for autistic children

There are the following reasons why swimming can act as a therapy for kids with autism-

  • Water relaxes muscles, provide comfort, and decreases stress.
  • Group swimming promotes better social skills.
  • Learning to swim improves learning skills.

2. Horse Riding

Horse Riding for autistic children
  • Children experience physical communication with horses. They learn to care for the horse and thus emotional bridge is constructed between them.
  • Intellectual and Language Skills Development. Autistic children have difficulty in comprehending directions. By engaging in this sport, your child will follow directions through fun activities. He will give the instructions to the horse for directions, which will provide more opportunities to communicate.
  • Intellectual concepts will also improve naturally. In this therapy, a therapist may ask a child to throw colored balls into baskets while riding, touch their eyes, mouth, and ears during a song, and identify scenes. All this incorporated during riding.

3. Gymnastics

Gymnastics for autistic children
  • Concentration or focus is required in each skill in the sport of gymnastics. This helps in increased attention to tasks outside of the sport of gymnastics.
  • Skills involved in gymnastics initiate brain development.
  • It gives the autistic child the opportunity to experience the joys of success through their individual achievements, or from the success of their teammates.
  • Gymnastics provides a sensory-rich environment while simultaneously using physical exercise to develop fine motor skills (like manipulating a hula hoop)and gross motor skills ( like running, climbing, jumping, etc) in children with autism.

4. Biking

Biking for Autistic child
  • Bike riding can help to improve fine motor skills and physical coordination as well as aid with balance.
  • It provides a sense of independence as well as the accompanying feelings of freedom, pride, and accomplishment.
  • After learning and mastering biking, they can now work hard to learn new things and have the confidence to succeed in other aspects of life.

Games And Activities For Adults With Autism

Adults with autism face many problems whether it may be in social life, language, or any life skill. Activities for autistic adults are different from those for children. Below is the list of best autism games and activities for them-

1. Fun Activities

Any activity that an adult with autism enjoys for fun can be called as a fun activity. Few activities that may prove as an improving factor for autistic adults include-

  • Going for a movie
  • Listening to music
  • Singing in a choir
  • Dancing
  • Camping
  • Art & Craft
  • Online Games
  • Storytelling

2. Social Interaction Activities

Try to perform those activities which involve interaction with different people. This will increase your confidence in social communication.

social interaction activities for autistic children

Games: Games that need the involvement of two or more players will help adults with autism to help build their social interaction skills.

Role Play: Sometimes it seems like the adults with autism lack the ability to relate emotionally to others. This makes it difficult for them to connect socially with others. So, Role Play is an excellent autistic activity which can help in building the social-emotional reciprocity. In this activity, the interaction is scripted. So, without any stress of real-world scenarios, this activity provides the best interaction example. The scenario in a script may involve offering comfort to a friend who is sad or worried.

The script also includes some pauses to discuss important elements like identifying that someone else is upset, asking questions to offer support, and providing comfort.


Conclusion

Many children suffer from Autism spectrum disorder. These children don’t know how to live, survive, and communicate with others.

This is a big problem both for the children and their parents. Most parents don’t know how to tackle the situation of their child and how to treat it.

I hope the games and activities mentioned in the article will help your child to be independent and improve their social skills.

If you need any assistance or have a question about Children With Autism, you can consult our HearingSol experts with your problem, feel free to call us on +91-9327901950. We are always here to help you.



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