The Autism Society Event and Education Recordings Archive

Okay! Play is important. I know it’s the “work” of preschoolers. The kids in my class CAN’T PLAY!! This workshop is designed to help you play with children with limited expressive language, poor motor planning skills, limited physical abilities, difficulties with interaction and/or poor organizational skills. Participants will gain a basic understanding of AAC and Floortime. Thematic based Play Mats will be demonstrated through the use of extensive video to teach participants the HOW of play. Play is often cited as the “work” of preschoolers. For children with disabilities, play is often repetitive in nature, lacking the true representational and interactive quality of their more typical peers. The research of Drs. Greenspan and Wieder in regards to the concept of “floortime” whereby adults in following a child's lead and expanding upon it, engage the child at an affective level in order to move them through defined developmental stages, is both compelling and well documented. Having trained with both Drs. Greenspan and Wieder I began to apply this relationship-bases model to children with little or no verbal language and yet was constantly challenged by the difficulty in incorporating spontaneous play with children with limited communication skills. The question became, how could I help children develop more representational play skills given their very limited communication, interaction, motor planning and motor skills. The marriage of play and agumentative communication is a difficult endeavor. It is one that is most essential for children with disabilities and yet it is most often ignored because it is so difficult for teachers, therapists, and parents to do. At the foundation of literacy development is play. Daily practice and the ideation involved in play builds the conceptual basis for later story comprehension. Children understand the concept of “fireman by seeing a fire station, having life experiences and playing being a firefighter with all the accompanying language and drama. They create the story of a fire and sequence the solution to the problems that arise as they go along. The ability to write a story with a beginning, middle and an end, is preceded by the ability to play out a story sequence in typically developing children. Yet children with disabilities spend very little of their time engaged in play and we often put the “cart of skill development” way before the “horse of play development.” My Thematic Based Play Mats were developed to help children with limited interaction, communication, motor planning and motor skills to develop more representational play skills. Each mat contains large props to help children “see” the possibilities in their play. Often children with disabilities cannot see the options in a room of toys and so they wander from thing to thing without meaningful interaction or manipulation of objects. The thematic mat puts the child in the right “ballpark” at the very least. Large Props set the stage for interactions that fit within the theme. Additional augmentative symbols are on the back of each prop in order to help children with the “what's next” in play. It is often this simple sequence that derails most play situations with children performing one simple action with a toy and then moving on to another. The organization of the mats allows for them to be utilized in classrooms and to help teachers and para pros alike with the “how to's” of play. It is through the creative use of both augmentative communication symbols and the principles of “floortime” a child with disabilities can begin the work of developing more representational play skills that will provide the foundation for further learning.

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