5 Writing Activities for Kids with Autism

Raising a child with autism is challenging. It requires you to be the mom, the teacher, and the counselor they need to grow and improve. You need to work extra hard to get your child to reach their full potential and lead a happy, balanced life. One of the challenges that many parents whose children have autism face is helping them learn how to write.

Autism can make it difficult for some children to master writing, even though it is not a learning disability. It imposes challenges such as sensory issues, hyper-focus on the details, handwriting performance, etc. This is why parents need to find the right activities for their kids to learn writing from.

To help you out, we’ve put together a list of 5 writing activities for kids with autism.

1. Pre-Writing Exercises

Writing is a complex process that requires the child to have already developed certain skills that will help them master writing.

It includes:

• object manipulation
• eye-hand coordination
• fine motor skills
• strong hand and finger muscles

Before you dig any deeper into actual writing, allow your child to do some pre-writing exercises that will enhance the above-listed skills:

• creating play-doh shapes and objects
• cutting out shapes with child-safe scissors
• playing with stickers
• playing with building blocks

Give your child the exercises for strengthening their pre-writing skills and you’ll find it easier to get into actual writing with them.

2. Post-it Missing Letters

It’s important to get started with writing in a fun and memorable way. Turning writing activities into games is better for their focus and motivation.

This requires investing more time on your side, which is why you should get your own writing problems out of the way first. This essay writing service can help you polish your writing a be of more help to your child.

Start with writing individual letters and learning to spell. Post-it missing letter is a game that can help significantly:

• take a big piece of paper and tape it to the wall
• choose a simple word to write on the top e.g. CLOUD
• write it several more times, leaving out a different letter each time e.g. CL_UD, _LOUD, CLO_D
• ask your child to write the missing letter on a post-it and fill out the gap by sticking it to the wall

As your child progresses, you can choose to do the same with longer words or even short phrases.

3. Building Sentences

Try making the writing activity both visual and physical. This way, your child doesn’t only have to focus on holding the pen and writing the letter the right way. They also get to have fun.

Building sentences is a simple exercise. Here’s what you need:

• a simple picture showing something like for example, three dogs
• the goal sentence which could be “I see three dogs”.
• several cards to divide the sentence in

So, you’ll write a part of the sentence on each of the cards, leaving out one word for the child to write on an empty card. They’ll first need to organize the mixed-up cards and then write the missing word.

The words on individual cards, in this case, would be “I”, “see”, “____________”, and “dogs”. The child’s task would be to write the word “three”.

It’s simple, fun, and easy for you to put together.

4. Visual Storytelling

To help your child get deeper into the process of writing, you could play the visual storytelling activity with them. In this exercise, you’ll be telling a story through talking, drawing, and eventually writing.

Here’s how it works:

• come up with a story idea- it could be an existing fairytale or your child’s weekend at their grandparents’ house
• help them tell the story or you tell it to them
• take a piece of paper and write down:
  Who?
  When?
  Why?
  Where?
  What?
  How?

• Have them answer your questions such as:
  Who did you visit?
  When did you visit them?
  How did this make you feel?

• Ask them to draw a picture of the story to finish the assignment.

This way, you’ve covered all the elements of proper storytelling and your child got to play, have fun, and practice writing in the process.

5. Jumbled Sentences

This exercise is great for kids of older age to practice writing. Just take any sentence and mix up the word order. For example:

• am     to water     plants     going     I     my

Provide a picture of a child watering their plants. Then, ask the child to fix the jumbled sentence and write it in the right order. It’s simple but super effective.

Final Thoughts

Writing might come across as a challenge for your child with autism, but it’s not something you should be afraid of. Arm yourself with creativity and patience, and you’ll both have fun while practicing writing.

Use the activities we’ve suggested above to make writing fun and efficient for your child with autism.

Author’s bio. Jessica Fender is a professional writer and educational blogger, an aggregator for useful college resources and websites. Jessica enjoys sharing her ideas to make writing and learning fun.