Gina from The Autism Helper demonstrates four games for virtual or classroom learning: Go to Sleep (role-play with movement), Color Hunt (scavenger hunt), Would You Rather (choice-making), and Singing Walrus videos (letter recognition). She emphasizes personalizing activities to each child's interests and staying warm and consistent during the first weeks of school.
Hi everyone, this is Gina from The Autism Helper. I'm here to show you some of my favorite, favorite games for early childhood if you're doing virtual learning or if you're back in person and you just need some type of fun engagement, especially for that first week of school. Remember, we're pairing ourselves, even if we're doing virtual learning, we want to pair ourselves as a chocolate chip cookie, something that these kids want to come and listen to or watch or come work with when we're at school. So here are some of my top ones. The first game is called Go to Sleep, and this one I found by Sasha. I saw this on, um, one of her Instagrams and I loved it. So I made one for my own clients and it has been going really, really well. So let's take a look at it. Basically you just say, go to sleep, and then following that you have a, when you wake up, you will be, type font. I made it personalized for this client who— these are the preferred things that he enjoys. So I put a dog on there. "When you wake up, you will be a dog." So first they pretend to go to sleep. So, "Shiny, sleep, sleep," and then wake up. "You wake up, you will be a dog," and then they have to act like a dog. Woof, woof, woof, woof. Okay, same thing, go to sleep, and so on all the way through. So ice cream, pretending to be a dinosaur, surprise, getting some of the emotions in there, wake up to be a fish, and making a pizza, and being a bunny rabbit. So you can make these personalized to the kids in your class or your clients at home. So that's one of my first ones. The second one that I really love is called Color Hunt. So of course you're gonna want to have some rules about this, but you just make a PowerPoint with different backgrounds of color. So red. So your rules are maybe, you know, you can prep the parents ahead of time for these things. So maybe they're not running all over the house or you set a timer so that, you know, your Zoom call isn't taking 20 minutes. So you just put up the colors and you say, "What color?" And they can say red and say, "Okay, go find something in your house that's red." And just make it fun for them. And then of course go through all the different colors, just primary for now. Okay. So that's my next one. Another one that I enjoy, this is a little bit higher level, is called Would You Rather. So, would you rather eat ice cream or hold a snail? And I just love using real photos of things. I think kids really connect with them and using the little kids in the photos. And they have to say, "I'd eat ice cream," or "I'd hold the snail," or "Ew!" And you can do lots of things with language with these. Would you rather pet a dog or pet a cat? And then you can go on. So swim or ride a bike and then keep going on with some of the things that your kids in your class like or your clients like at home. And then one of the last things that I love so much is just a simple YouTube video. It's called The Singing Walrus. They have all kinds of different videos for different things, letters, numbers. My kids love the counting 1 to 10 with Chickie and Friends. But this one is find the letter and they do it with all the letters alphabet, both upper and lowercase letters. My kids loved this game. It's so simple. 3 capital A's in this So now they're gonna try and find the capital H. So they have to use visual discrimination, timing, looking, it's engaging, it's fun. I say, "Put on your glasses." And they get the 20 seconds. And then they can say, "I see it under the slide or on top of the playground or by the swing." And then it'll highlight them. And you can count them, 1, 2, 3. "A," and then it does it with the lowercase letters too. "Did them all?" Then goes over them. Love this game. My kids loved it so much. I used it for everything. So those are my few favorite games for both virtual and in-class. Personally, remember you're being a chocolate chip cookie forever and always, but of course that first week of school, first few weeks, we want to pair ourselves. So good luck this year, and I hope you like these recommendations.
