Monday, August 27, 2007

Free Printable Fun for Kids with Autism

Free Printable Learning Activities for Autistic Children
by Jamie Sue Austin
Blog: Free Printable Fun

Finding printable learning activities online for children is easy. There are a wealth of sites that offer great resources for teaching children at home.

Sites for parents offers a HUGE listing of websites that offer quality educational printables. http://www.sitesforparents.com/

For parents of autistic children the resources are smaller, but still available. While I believe there are wonderful, affordable materials out there for parents to purchase, it's nice to try things for free before committing to purchases that may not work for the individual child. If you have a laminating machine at home (who doesn't, right?) then you can actually substitute many purchased learning materials for free ones.

Do2Learn has some wonderful illustrations that can be used to help autistic children create and maintain a schedule. Print, laminate, add Velcro stickies.. POOF! You're done. I have to commend this site for giving away for free what a lot of parents have been paying for. http://www.do2learn.com/

LearningPage has a great selection of worksheets and printable books that would be excellent for both typical children learning their fundamentals and autistic children learning vocabulary, sequencing, and categorizing. The site is free but requires registration. High five for the developers of this resource as they provide an almost complete K-5 curriculum's worth of activities. http://www.learningpage.com/

MES-English.com is a site that has wonderful printables for those learning English as a second language. The illustrations are snappy and the concepts uncluttered. They would work well for teaching vocabulary, daily routine, adverbs and adjectives, and prepositions to children with autism. I myself use their preposition cards. This is a truly stunning site. The printables are offered in many different formats so that you can choose which best suits your needs. I'm very fond of the PowerPoint layouts because it allows me to print 6 images to a sheet of card stock, which I can laminate for my child to use.

While I'm sure that these materials were not created with an autistic child in mind they are just as impressive as those that are. I have to give the creator some serious kudos on that.

If a child is learning a second language they are an excellent resource as well because most of the printables are available in more than one language. Aside from flash cards they offer coloring sheet, phonics worksheets, printable stickers, and great clip art. A wonderful free site!!! http://www.mes-english.com/flashcards.php

And just for fun... Here's a random paper toy. It's an autism awareness car!

http://www.buttonsandmore.com/toycar/ulthm.htm

Thanks to Jamie Sue for letting us use your article: Free Printable Learning Activities for Autistic Children. The free printable fun blog also has a nice selection of other links. www.freeprintablefun.blogspot.com

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, thanks for the nice words about MES-English! I hope the materials are helpful to you and your visitors.

Happy teaching,
Mark Cox

the guy behind MES-English.com

Jan Hopkins said...

Another site with printables for autistic students is http://www.adaptiveworksheets.com

There are free worksheets as well as those for members