Board Games For Kids with Autism

A board game is a game that consist of movement of counters or other stuffs round a board. Autistic kids have a broad range of circumstances which includes challenges with social skills, monotonous deeds and non-verbal communication. Research shows that early intervention can advance learning skills and communication as well as underlying brain growth.

Parents get overwhelmed and wonder what to do when they realize that their kids are diagnosed of autism. A child psychiatrist uses games to work with autistic kids, this helps with various aspects or challenges that the kids with autism have which is also fun and makes the kids also to be lively. Research shows that board games can be helpful to children with autism spectrum disorder since they assist in growth of skills that the kids would have found harder to master. 

Benefits of playing board games

Consider bringing out board games on weekends or over long holidays, kids benefit a lot since this are like special family times to them. With these they are able to show their feelings, improve language development. This also teaches the about team work and also taking turns. These are some of the main benefits:

1. Offer early learning opportunities

These games offer early learning opportunities such as identifying colors, counting skills, identifying alphabets and spelling words, etc. The kids will also learn to follow guidelines of turn taking and hand-eye coordination.

2. Decision making

While playing board games the kid is required to make quick and effective moves. The player has to think critically rather than just making any move. This later end up helping kids to make good choices of their personal real life.

3. Focus

Whenever kids are playing games they want the honor to be winners and hence they try all their best to win. Having the focus will assist them in real life so as to achieve their goals. This will also improve yours kids skills of doing one thing at a time to the end without getting interrupted with other things.

4. Enhancement of language skills

While kids are playing there are games that they have to remember something so as to continue are being successful in the game. This might help a child who is not able to spell, utter or read words.

5. Teamwork

This helps your kid to spend time together and get out of boredom, this will also allow your kid to know their peers, interact and spend more time together. 

Best games for kids with autism

1.  Flash cards game

This cards games works for kids by improving their social skills and also their emotions. The cards are used to help kids learn counting numbers which can also be used for stacking or maybe also organizing them in a certain order. Such as colors, sizes or numbers.

2. Face Memory Matching Game

This game is fun to play which makes a kid to have focus while improving their remembrance on something. This makes them to recognize something that they won’t forget again.

How to play

• First pick the tiles out of the box and place them on the table facing down that you cannot see the face.
• Placing the tiles into an organized grid is best recommended
• The game starts where the first player flips over a pair of cards that he/she thinks they match.
• If the tiles don’t match then the tiles should be flipped back and a second player tries their lack and so on.
• If the player finds a match on the tiles, then he/she will keep them as a pair and he/she is the one to continue playing until failure so that the next person can play.
• The players should keep on playing until the tiles are over
• The winner of the game is the one with most pairs of tiles.

3. Stack it peg board game

The game consists of pegs of different colors. For this game you stack pegs on top each other and see how high you can go. You can also use the stacks to make different patterns. The pegs can also be used where the kids separates different colors.

4. Locate emotion game

This game helps kids locate emotions. This helps kids know the world around them which helps them also to cooperate with their peers.

In future this kids later are able to solve issues in life make investigations by themselves and answer complex questions. This is also a good tool for parents to realize their kid’s emotions. The cards are made up of 18 different emoji mood tabs like angry, confident, confused, excited, frustrated etc. The book is set to improve the children’s social skills by interacting with people around them. The pages of this books are laminated for more durability of the book.

5. Matching Letter game

This game helps kids to recognize letters, matching and also allows kids to concentrate and taking turns whenever they are playing as a group.

How to play 

Method 1:

Playing according to the design on the card, find to match the letters and place them into the letter area.

Method 2:

Playing according to the picture, let the kid find the letters according to the present picture’s name.

Method 3:

Let the kid find the picture whose name is made by the letters placed on the board.

Method 4:

Leave the board with some missing letters and let the kid find them and fill in.

6. Scrabble games

This is a word game where you are given a set of letters and you are to make as many words as possible. This game also teaches on mastering spellings of words. This also improves ones linguistic development, following instructions and also controlling your feelings. It also improves your kid’s social skills and taking turns.

7. Snakes and ladders

The main aim of this game is to teach on morality. Ladders are represented to teach on virtues while snakes are represented to teach on evil. The kid will try their best not to get to evil which is represented by snakes. The game will increase rate of your child’s decision making.