Like me, you are here because you want to know the best indoor activities for autistic child… Let’s find out!
Keeping your child happy and engaged while simulating their social, communication, fine motor skills, and language can be hard. And when you combine all this with developmental delays resulting from autism, everything feels like an impossibility.
For most autistic children, learning delays, problems with sensory processing, and explosive meltdowns make some days overwhelming.
In this blog, we bring you 10+ fun indoor activities for autistic child- messy, educative, creative, inspiring, and more…
9 Amazing Indoor Activities for Kids with Autism
1. Scavenger Hunt
Engaging in a scavenger hunt indoors is a lot of fun. This indoor activity will boost your child’s language skills, receptive skills, and social skills. Here are some amazing scavenger hunt activities for 3 year old autistic child:
- Colors Scavenger Hunt: ask your child to find items of a specific color in the house. For instance, you can ask them to search for red, pink, blue, or any of their favorite colors.
- Sensory Scavenger Hunt: use the sense of smell, taste, touch, see, and hearing as part of your scavenger hunt clues. For instance, you can ask your child to search for something sweet and cold…
- Prepositional Scavenger Hunts: With this, you’ll ask your child to search for items in specific places. For instance, you can tell them the item is in the kitchen, on the couch, in the corners, etc.
- ABC Scavenger Hunt: place different letters of the alphabet around your house. Then, ask your child to look for the letters. If the situation allows it, you can arrange the letters in order once you find them.
2. Shaving Cream Painting
I know how this sounds- messy! Because it sure is! But, it is among the best indoor activities for autistic child.
For this activity, you’ll need shaving cream and pour some amount on a flat surface (Ensure that the shaving cream does not spill over). Then, let your child use their fingers to draw different shapes, numbers, and letters in the cream.
To make this indoor activity more fun, you can mix some water paints and let your child explore! This activity promotes social skills as they teach the basics of working together to get great results.
3. Do Some Puzzles
Most children with autism love the challenge that jigsaw puzzles bring. If your child is younger, cut out different shapes and leave your child to sort them out. You can draw some dotted lines and let your child join the dots to create some pictures.
For older ASD kids, l you can get some puzzle pieces and let the fun begin. To make the game more rewarding and entertaining, you can give some awards for each level that your child can achieve.
ALSO READ: ADHD Child Refuses to Do School Work: How You Can Help Them Succeed
4. Enjoy Some Music!
Through music, children and adults can express their personalities. So, while indoors, get some music instruments, put on some music, and hit the dance floor. If you don’t have instruments, you can turn some common items like spoons, plates, and cooking sticks into amazing musical instruments.
Also, instead of setting a specific tune or dancing style for everyone, let your kids express themselves. This will boost their confidence and allow them to stretch their capabilities.
5. Make a Sand Table
At times, it is the simple indoor activities for autistic child that bring the most fun. With this activity, you’ll get a large box with higher walls and fill it halfway with sand. (You can go for regular sand or magnetic sand for this activity).
Then pick a variety of children’s tools like rakes, molds, spade, and mold for use during the activity. As your child heaps the sand to create different shapes and figures using sand, it will greatly stimulate their sensory organs.
6. Recreate Popular Paintings
Most kids with autism are great visual learners. And one of the best ways for these kids to have fun and grow their fine motor skills is by inspiring creativity.
For a start, you can show your kids a beautiful painting and then task them with painting a similar painting. Or, to boost their creativity, ask them to create a unique version of the famous painting.
In the initial stages, the kids may be too nervous to create anything meaningful. However, this will change once they immerse their minds and soul in the new challenge.
At the end of it all, the aim is to help autistic kids to be more creative while having fun!
7. Learn New Words
Now that you have time to spend indoors, why not take advantage and learn some new words? You can download free printable online or print out your custom worksheet to build your kid’s vocabulary.
To make learning more fun, you can turn these words into a tune and dance it away. Also, you can create a competition where you reward every new word that your child spells right.
8. Under Alphabet Bottle
This is one of the most effective indoor activities for autistic child to boost social skills. To play, you’ll require alphabet beads, a plastic bottle, glitters, water, glue, and corn syrup.
Let your pick the alphabet beads and one after the other, place them in the plastic bottle. Then, drop the glitters in the bottle. Fill ½ the bottle with clean water and the other half pour corn syrup.
To ensure that the content doesn’t spill over and that the glitters do not stick together, put glue on the lid. Then, shake the content as your child watches.
Now to the more fun, yet challenging activity… finding the letters one after the other as you shake the bottle.
9. Making Number Rubbings
All children love painting, and this is an amazing way to introduce them to the art of rubbing. The activity will help in boosting their eye-hands coordination and strengthen their hand muscles.
To play, you’ll need 10 pieces of blank papers, a pencil, scissors, crayons, and items with diverse textures. Take each piece of paper and draw one number from 1 to 10- ensure that the numbers are big, block, And outlined to make it easy to color.
Taking one number at a time, place an object below the paper and rub the crayon on the object. If it is number 1 on the paper, only make 1 design of the item under the paper, number 2, make 2 designs, and so on.
To make it more challenging for older kids, you can ask them to rub different designs on the paper until they reach the desired number.
These indoor activities for autistic child will make them better in math. They will know how to count objects and then associate the amount with the correct number.
Do you know other activities for nonverbal autistic child? Please share with us in the comment section below.