Working on the Face’s Perceptions
Autistic children have body schema and self image problems. As a result, that causes them difficulties to know, introduce and live their own bodies. To build and consolidate his body schema, Matthieu’s psychomotrician makes him do some exercises, like putting the different members of the body or the face in the right place.
I want to suggest you some game ideas that you might already have at home, in order to work on the face’s perceptions with your autistic child.
Locating Face Characteristics
Guess Who? Board Game (Hasbro)
Still difficult for the youngest (Matthieu is too young for these games: too many possibilities), this game can be convenient for children aged 5 and more. That will help them work on the eyes and the mouth’s location, colours, differences and similarities. To begin, don’t hesitate to choose easy characters to guess: those who have some peculiarities like wearing glasses or a hat, or having a moustache, are easy to find.
Positioning of the Face’s Elements
Magnetics (Diset)
This series of magnets is suitable to work on the face’s elements. Later, once the positions are identified, you can show them the different facial expressions (anger, joy, sadness) as well as differences between genders (male/female).
Working on the face’s expressions and emotions
4 Face Expressions Puzzle
As they are unable to read the face’s expressions, autistic children find it hard to identify people’s emotions and feelings from the look on their face. With these simple puzzles, make your child learn, in addition to the positioning of the face’s elements (for the youngest), expressions’ specificities and their relationship with feelings (joy, anger, sadness, surprise…).
Your turn!
How do you teach face elements’ positioning and face expressions to your child? Tell us all about it in the comments!
Translation: Sihem Boussabat
