HANDS in Autism

HANDS in Autism is an autism treatment center located in Indiana that is involved in clinical research and outreach activities. We want to bring to your attention their website because you will find many practical materials there. While we certainly suggest you explore their entire site, it is the "tools" tab that you will find particularly helpful in your daily work.

As we know many children within the autism spectrum learn best with visual support and here http://www.handsinautism.org/tools.html you will find many useful materials already created for you.  You will only have to print and laminate ready made materials for communication, social skills, teaching skills, transition supports, and self monitoring!

For Communication they have created help and break cards, pulley visual prompt cards, and choice boards. I need to interject here that they also have a how-to video in their e-Learning section http://www.handsinautism.org/choiceBoard.html that demonstrates how to use choice boards.

In the Social Skills section you will find visual supports to create materials for topic boards, social narratives (getting gifts and dentist visit), playbooks and playscripts,  board game visuals, and your turn-my turn cards.

The Teaching Skill area has materials for rewards systems and token boards, work systems based on the TEACCH method, and sorting tasks.

They have a good array of things in the Transition Supports: visual schedules, activity schedules, stoplight & count down boards, and first then boards.  Again in the e-Learning section you will find a video tutorial for teaching first then. http://www.handsinautism.org/FirstThenBoard.html

The final section is Self Monitoring. I love that they have included a detailed section just for sensory kits. They have taken all the time consuming work of  "thinking of items" out of it and have listed suggested items that one could in a kit for tactile, visual, olfactory, auditory, gustatory, proprioreceptive, and vestibular. In this section they also provide ready made voice charts.

As you can see this website is certainly one you will want to bookmark or pin so you will have ready access to it.

Leah J Musgrave, M.S. CCC-Sp
Dean Trout retired SLP
http://www.2galsspeechproducts.com/