Autism Therapeutic & Academic Children’s Program

By Angela Gachassin M.Ed.

Autism Therapeutic & Academic Children’s Program was originally created, written, and used for her own son who was diagnosed with highly moderate to severe autism at the tender age of two and remained nonverbal until the age of six.

Her autism children’s program was the initial building block that began her son’s advanced receptive and expressive language skills for effective communication as a nonverbal child and offered simple solutions to his many therapeutic and academic needs.

This autism program focuses on developing, building, and strengthening necessary skills to attain proper child development both therapeutically and academically for autistic children.

Angela created a “hands-on experience” supplies kit with over fifty different therapeutic and educational items that correlate directly with the 150-plus skills taught throughout the entire autism program for proven successful learning, progression, and mastery!

Therapeutic and academic skills development will increase from a wide variety of opportunities for reinforcement to secure learning and advancement emotionally, socially, physically, therapeutically, and academically.

The therapeutic content of the autism program focuses on phonics and language-vocabulary building, basic reading skills, beginner handwriting and tracing skills, sensory integration, gross motor skills, fine motor skills, play skills, art skills, music skills, social skills, and self-care development skills. The academic content focuses on basic math numbers one through twenty and on community awareness.

Angela’s Autism Therapeutic & Academic Children’s Program offers creative and fun activities for any child with autism struggling with skill difficulties and deficits.

Her son is now healed of autism for life!

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Sep 20, 2018
• ISBN: 9781973639572

Angela Gachassin M.Ed.

Angela Gachassin, M.Ed. is a passionate autism advocate, and intervention consultant. She has a Master’s Degree from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette focused in Elementary Education, Special Education, and Guidance & Counseling. She is the author of Autism Healed for Life, Public Speaker, and Mother of a Son who is Healed from Severe Autism.

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Copyright © 2018 Angela Gachassin, M.Ed.

Interior Graphics by Angela Gachassin.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

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Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-9736-3958-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-3957-2 (e)

WestBow Press rev. date: 11/09/2018

Contents

Introduction

1   Planning for Success

•   Creating an Effective Environment for Learning

•   Strategies for Successful Learning

•   Rewarding a Child with Positive Reinforcement

•   Suggestions for Possible Behavioral Difficulties

2   Therapeutic Skills

•   Phonics & Language Building for Effective Communication, Reading Ability, and Writing Skills

•   Sensory Integration Dysfunction

•   Play Skills

•   Fine Motor Skills

•   Art Skills

•   Music Skills

•   Social and Self-Care Skills

3   Academic Skills

•   Basic Math Skills

•   Community Awareness

4   How to Purchase our Therapeutic and Academic Supplies Kit (TASK)

Introduction

Welcome! I’m very excited to help you get started with my autism therapeutic and academic children’s program. My program was originally created and written in a user-friendly style to help my own son who was diagnosed with highly moderate to severe autism at the tender age of two and remained nonverbal until the age of six.

Autism Healed for Life, my recently published book, shares the moving chronicle of our daily experiences as we struggled to conquer his many autism symptoms, characteristics, and behaviors. After a fourteen-year journey my son is completely healed from autism with accurate speech pronunciation. His story is encouraging and inspirational offering hope to all!

My autism program was the initial building blocks that began my son’s advanced receptive and expressive language skills for effective communication as a nonverbal child and offered simple solutions to his many therapeutic and academic needs.

As an elementary teacher of many years and parent who has raised a nonverbal autistic child, I know firsthand the importance of helping a child with autism achieve basic daily developmental skills to function in this world.

The program focuses on developing, building, and strengthening the necessary skills to attain proper child development both therapeutically and academically for autistic children.

I’ve created a hands-on supplies kit with over fifty different therapeutic and educational items that correlate directly with the skills taught throughout the entire autism program for proven successful learning, progression, and mastery! The supplies kit has a wide variety of brightly colored, fun, therapeutic, and educational items which creates an atmosphere of excitement, motivation, and interest for the child.

Please visit my website below for purchasing the supplies kit necessary to ensure a child’s successful learning, significant progression, and heightened skill development for my autism therapeutic and academic children’s program!

www.autismhealedforlife.com

As an elementary teacher of many years, I knew the necessary skills my son needed to achieve proper child development, so I began typing the autism program myself. Being my son was so young, I knew he would advance and soar with hands-on experiences, and colorful, exciting educational items to keep his attention and motivate him to participate and learn! My autism program was very successful for my son! He’s been an honor roll student throughout his years of school since pre-kindergarten through high school.

He was completely nonverbal until almost seven years old, so it was crucial we would be able to effectively communicate with one another easily on a day-to-day basis. I began teaching him alphabet letters and phonics when he was three years old, and at five years old he could fingerspell words to me which significantly enhanced our level of communicating on a day-to-day basis. Glenn’s receptive and expressive language skills were highly advanced because of our time together learning the alphabet, repetition of picture cards, and sight word recognition.

The program includes therapeutic and academic skill development with a wide variety of opportunities for reinforcement to secure learning and advancement emotionally, socially, physically, therapeutically, and academically. The combination of strengthening therapeutic needs and academic learning are a perfect blend to use together for strategic intervention for an autistic child. Better results occur with a mix of skills and strategies! Even though the program is primarily in two sections, feel free to mix therapeutic and academic activities during the same day.

My expertise in educating young children will reveal many additional tips for adults to understand how a child can take pleasure in their learning environment; creating an effective environment for learning, strategies for successful learning, rewarding a child with positive reinforcement, and suggestions for handling possible behavioral difficulties. These added bonuses are taken from an elementary teacher who has taught both regular and special education students including autistic students.

The therapeutic content is focused on phonics and language building, sensory integration needs, gross motor skills, fine motor skills, play skills, art skills, music skills, social skills, and self-care skills. The therapeutic section of the program can be introduced to the child in any order with exception to the phonics and language vocabulary building lessons. Introduce the phonics and language vocabulary building lessons in consecutive lesson number order.

Most autistic children struggle with sensory integration dysfunction. I highly recommend carefully reading the information and glossary in the sensory integration chapter. I simplified medical terminology concerning sensory integration dysfunction for adults to clearly understand the meaning of these medical terms. Understanding the sensory needs of an autistic child is critical to increase progression and development of skills at a faster pace

The academic content is focused on basic math and community awareness. The math lessons are introduced in consecutive order. For example, begin lesson one in the basic math section, and after the child successfully learns the specific skill, then the child is ready to move on to lesson two in the basic math section. If you would like to introduce lesson one in phonics and language vocabulary building, and lesson one in basic math on the same day that is fine. Maintain consecutive lesson order throughout the phonics and language vocabulary building and basic math sections of the autism program.

Academic learning will progress tremendously once sensory needs are lessened.

Gross motor and fine motor activities are throughout the therapeutic content of the autism program. Each child is individual in their pace of successfully learning and building skills, but effort always brings faster results!

Each lesson throughout the entire autism program will be "user-friendly" for adults and children. Lessons will include the subject content, the lesson number, skills being developed and strengthened, materials needed which come from the therapeutic and academic supplies kit (TASK), activities for the lesson, the specific skill goals, and positive reinforcement tips to keep the child engaged, motivated, and excited about learning!

There is no time table to complete this program. Each individual lesson is written in a unique user-friendly style, and considered to be a time of enjoyment, creative and fun learning, and laughter while the child achieves higher developmental skills and advances therapeutically and academically.

A child’s confidence and self-esteem will soar as he/she learns new concepts, and develops, builds, and strengthens his/her skills. Every child will gain a sense of achievement!

Planning for Success

Creating an Effective Environment for Learning

• A child must feel safe and secure with whom they are learning from to reach their highest functioning potential. Create a safe and loving atmosphere for the child to play and learn.

• Honor a child’s unique developmental timeline. There is no time limit to complete the autism program.

• Use a soft toned voice during lessons. If a child becomes irritable or frustrated because of difficulty with a specific skill, redirect them.

• Redirect simply means to stop what is currently irritating or frustrating the child and choose something else to do that you are certain they would enjoy. Leave that prior situation. You can always choose another day to continue working on those specific skills.

• Express how proud you are for his/her efforts while working on lessons and learning new skills.

• The child and adult should both be in calm relaxed moods.

• Allow a child to hold and/or squeeze one of the stress balls from the supplies kit if necessary while learning. The stress ball will lessen sensory issues and provide better focus for the child during instruction time.

• Begin the lesson with positive reinforcement. Tell the child they can earn reward (fun) time for being a good listener. Allow the child to earn a reward after completing the day’s activity. The child may want to play with a specific item from the supplies kit. Allow time to play with the item of choice as a reward, watch a favorite cartoon, or eat a favorite snack. Whatever helps to keep the child motivated is worth it!

• If an activity seems too difficult and a child appears stressed, irritable, or frustrated stop the activity. A child can not learn or progress under tense conditions.

Strategies for Successful Learning

• One-on-one instruction is the most effective teaching method used for a young child.

• Scheduled daily routines help an autistic child to feel organized in their world.

• Autistic children are visual learners and thinkers. Create a visual display of a schedule with pictures for the child to understand their day’s schedule. This will help alleviate frustration on the child’s part. Any time his/her schedule changes adults may notice behavior issues may arise.

• Drinking plenty of water keeps the brain hydrated and ready to learn.

• Adults should give simple instructions one step at a time. Multiple tasks given at one time may confuse and frustrate the child.

• A child may enjoy listening to low volume calming classical instrumental music in the background because it may help maintain focus on the therapeutic and/or academic activity.

• Activities with musical instruments (rhythm and sequencing activities) can strengthen the auditory-visual-motor-systems. Included in the supplies kit is a small band set of simple musical instruments and a xylopiano. The musical items will be hours of fun! These are excellent choices to use for positive reinforcement after lessons.

• Checking a child’s hearing is very important especially if they have experienced ear infections, and/or do not respond to their name being called.

• Checking a child’s eye vison is important.

Rewarding a Child with Positive Reinforcement

• Positive reinforcement promotes motivation and interest.

• Create a chart as a reward system. The chart must be visible for the child to see. For example, a colored poster board works great. Earning a certain number of stickers can mean a child has earned a special snack to eat, more play time with their favorite toy item, or some type of privilege he/she would enjoy.

• Colored stars and happy face stickers are included in the supplies kit for positive reinforcement.

• Display a child’s activity worksheet for everyone to see. Include a star or happy face sticker to enhance their efforts and promote their achievements.

• Smiles and verbal praise promote self-esteem.

• Favorite food snacks are a great positive reinforcer. Children love snacks!

• Watch a favorite program or cartoon on television.

• Play a favorite game.

• An adult may increase the list for additional rewards that would further promote the child’s motivation.

• Ask the child for reward suggestions.

• If a new task is very difficult he/she may need more frequent positive reinforcement throughout the activity.

Suggestions for Possible Behavioral Difficulties

Becoming Interested

• Reward more frequently as the lesson begins.

• Continue using positive reinforcement throughout the lesson.

• Sit close to the child during the lesson and activities.

• Tell the child how learning time is fun!

• Use items from the supplies kit to enhance interest, motivation, and the child’s participation.

Paying Attention

• Look at the child when giving directions.

• Allow the child to hold a stress ball or small item if necessary.

• Use items from the supplies kit to allow a child the hands-on experience for increased learning and mastery of skills.

Following Directions

• Give clear directions to the child and speak slowly.

• Most young children only understand one command/task at a time.

• Repeat directions often for clarity.

• Monitor closely as the child begins the lesson and activity skills.

Staying on Task

• Increase positive reinforcements.

• Reduce distractions that may prevent the child from learning.

• Work with the child in shorter time segments if needed.

• Explain the skill or concept the child will be learning before modeling the skill.

• Give explanations in small, easy steps.

Therapeutic Skills

Phonics & Language Building for Effective Communication, Reading Ability, and Writing Skills

Phonics & Language Building Teaching Tips

• Begin with lesson one. After the child has successfully completed this lesson and understands the skill, you may move on to lesson two.

• Continue to teach the phonics/language building lessons in consecutive order.

• It’s very important for phonics to build one skill upon the next.

• Children will get to know phonics and learn to connect letter sounds with objects: K is for kite, for example. The ABC flashcards will teach them that each letter is a symbol that can be memorized.

• Use the suggested supplies kit items as you introduce the phonics/language building lessons.

• Introduce multiple kit items to advance the child’s understanding, and concept of the skills at a faster pace.

• Following each individual phonics/language building lesson will ensure to promote the child’s progression with language skills and tremendously increase vocabulary.

• Picture word flashcards should be used every time you begin a new phonics/language building lesson. It only takes a few minutes and a child will benefit greatly from picture word cards especially nonverbal children.

• Reinforce learning three different ways when using the picture word flashcards; the child will visually see the image, see the written word near the picture, and hear the adult say the word orally.

• Repetition is key to learning!

• Autistic children are mostly visual thinkers and learners. Eventually with enough repetition of seeing the picture word flashcards, these words will become recognizable sight words for the child. Often young children can spell a short word from memory of the letters, not the phonic sounds of the individual letters.

• Many different sets of colorful picture word flashcards are in the supplies kit. Young children love these bright, cheerful, and educational cards. A wonderful, fun way to enhance vocabulary development.

• A child can learn to fingerspell, write, or type simple words he/she memorizes from using picture word flashcards repetitively. Focus on nouns because if a child spells a noun the adult can understand which topic especially a nonverbal child would like to convey for communicating.

• For nonverbal children introduce "simple hand signs" that can represent different wants or needs of the child. For example, a closed fist may represent a bathroom need. An open hand with fingers up may represent being hungry. This is extremely beneficial for adults, teachers, and family members to understand the wants and/or needs of the child. This will significantly lessen irritability and frustration for a nonverbal child.

• Simple hand signs are especially important once a nonverbal child begins preschool to have clear communication with adults and caretakers for his/her wants and needs.

Learning the Alphabet

• There are two different ways the alphabet letters may be introduced to children. Use your personal preference.

• First, some educators believe a child should learn the uppercase letters first, then the lowercase letters because most letter combinations of uppercase and lowercase letters look different. Teaching them together can be confusing. For example, Bb, Dd, Gg, and Rr represent the same letter but look completely different. Some young children do not understand this concept when they are first introduced to the alphabet letters.

• Secondly, other educators believe a child should learn the uppercase and lowercase alphabet letters together.

• The uppercase and lowercase lesson activities are written separately in consecutive order throughout this portion of the autism program.

• Teach only one letter at a time. Begin with the letter A and/or Aa and introduce the letters in consecutive order through Z and/or Zz.

• As the child learns different alphabetical letters, introduce him/her to simple words that begin with the same letter. The supplies kit offers a variety of items to further develop, build, and strengthen these language building skills.

• Graphic activity sheets with pictures of words that begin with the lesson’s alphabetical letter will further develop and reinforce the skill. These activity sheets will follow behind the actual lesson page.

• There is a wide variety of educational items in the supplies kit that can be used for uppercase and lowercase alphabetical letters. It’s highly recommended to use all supplies kit items for phonics and language building to enhance the highest development and progression of individual skills.

• Each phonics and language building lesson will list the different educational items from the supplies kit which develops, builds, strengthens, and further reinforces each specific skill.

• The ABC Learn the Alphabet activity book in the supplies kit is very effective because it allows children to recognize, identify, form letters, and build fine motor skills.

• Repetition is the ultimate key to success! Continue to use the alphabet flashcards to continuously reinforce the different alphabetical letters, and simple words that represent each letter. I highly recommend this because my own son learned to fingerspell, write, and type words even though he was nonverbal until almost seven years old. Communication became so easy between us once he learned simple words.

• Expect to be amazed with the dramatic increase in vocabulary development from continuously reviewing picture word flashcards. These skills will tremendously lessen the child’s irritability and frustration because they can communicate more effectively with others.

Snack Activity with the Alphabet Letters

Children love snacks! A fun activity for positive reinforcement and motivation is to choose a snack to eat with the child that begins with the letter of the day! The letter of the day is the uppercase or lowercase alphabetical letter you are introducing for the first time.

Here’s a simple list for snack suggestions.

Simple Words for Vocabulary Building

This list of simple words is an additional activity for children who are advanced with phonemic awareness and like building words with the alphabet foam letters and/or the ABC wooden blocks in the supplies kit.

The most effective way young children increase basic vocabulary is by learning nouns. During the preschool and kindergarten school years nouns are used to enhance reading ability.

Children can enjoy hours of fun creating these simple vocabulary words! This list can easily be continued by an adult.