Stimulate the Senses: Top Activities for Teens with Autism
Autism
Summer is in full swing, and even when school is out – teens love to be stimulated, learn and play. This summer, we want to make sure you don’t run out of things to do! Here we give you some great ideas to keep your student having fun all vacation long.
Setting the Stage for Learning
Activities, especially for teens with autism and other exceptionalities, give them a sense of reward, achievement, and fulfillment. The right activities can set the stage for learning, a sense of social inclusivity, and allow them to reach individual developmental milestones. Activities can also prevent teens from succumbing to feelings of frustration, and instead, relish in the joy of expressing themselves as independent individuals.
Dive into the Senses
Teens with ASDs will very frequently experience exceptionalities in sensory processing. It is considered highly beneficial for teens to engage in activities that stimulate all their senses.
The benefits include:
Creating new neural connections in the brain
Encouraging the development of fine and gross motor skills
Practicing cooperation and collaboration in a social environment
Problem-solving abilities
Language output
Sensory play will focus on one particular sense or engage several of them, as well as build the foundations for engaging with everyday stimuli in a positive way.
Sight
Everyone remembers how mesmerizing yet relaxing it was to stare into a lava lamp. This classic seventies throwback has the ability to capture both teenagers and adults’ attention alike, as well as being fun, inexpensive, easy, and teen-friendly to create at home.
By creating a “Lava Lamp in a Bag” you get all the benefits of stimulating your teen’s vision, without the danger of heat, glass, or toxic chemicals.
First, you will need baby oil, a large resealable freezer bag, liquid food coloring, and water. Encourage your teen to choose his or her favorite colors while you fill the freezer bag full of baby oil.
Next, add a few drops of liquid coloring to the oil and shake.
Right before sealing the bag to prevent leaks, add some water droplets to create bubbles within the lava and then finally carefully seal.
Your teen will now be able to manipulate the bag to create movement, patterns, and splotches while shaking will create new and interesting organic formations that will fascinate for hours!
Smell
A great idea in order to stimulate olfactory responses is to create a smelling station. This encourages the practice of mindfulness while teens take in the different scents and are encouraged to describe their experience and guess what the smell belongs to.
This provides great practice for real-life situations when they may be introduced into a complex and chaotic environment unexpectedly and must manage a variety of olfactory stimulations happening at once.
Cotton balls can be dipped in essential oils, soaps, spices, liquids as well as laying out strong-smelling plants, vegetables, or common everyday household products. Teens must take time to smell each stage in the station and note what they experience, what they like and dislike, and where they would typically encounter each smell. It also serves as a great safety talk to warn those participating about which smells they should avoid as they could be dangerous.
Sound
As we want to avoid overstimulation through sound, this next activity focuses on creating a safe space to experiment and experience different sounds.
A perfect way to do this is to create a soundscape that mimics the sound of falling rain during a storm. It couldn’t be easier to make – only requiring plastic cups, toothpicks, cotton balls, liquid glue, and rice.
The rice can even be dyed with blue coloring in order to appear more like raindrops. You must fill one cup with the different components (toothpicks are especially essential in order to create the desired auditory effect) and then carefully glue the other cup on top to create a completely sealed unit. Once the glue is completely dry, your teen will be able to enjoy creating calming rain sounds whenever they wish!
Touch
Touch is a huge component of sensory stimulation and something that has become extremely popular recently is creating slimes, doughs, and filled balloons. How can you make one which engages your teen and keeps them entertained?
Try following our recipe to make a “dough with a difference.” It requires all-purpose flour, vegetable oil, and powdered coloring. The flour and oil should be mixed together at a ratio of two cups of flour to a quarter of a cup of oil, with the powdered dye added slowly and continuously so that it distributes evenly throughout the finished product.
The result is a dough that your teen can play with to their heart’s content, but that’s not all! When your teen no longer wants to create with the dough, you can add vinegar and create a fizzy-sensory-delight. The vinegar reacts to the baking soda in the all-purpose flour and the quantity of fizz you want to create can be controlled by the method in which you add it.
Dropping it in certain areas of the dough creates controlled hot spots while pouring it on top will make it come alive, doubling as an amazing science experiment.
Taste
Taste is a very important sense to develop and all human beings crave and delight in eating. What can prove problematic for some teens is how food appears visually, or fear trying new things. A fun way to broaden your teen’s palette is by doing a blind taste test! After covering your teen’s eyes, you invite them to try small amounts of a variety of flavors, textures, and food groups. By removing sight you require them to use their other senses and stimulate the creation of new neural pathways as they embark on a totally new experience.
It’s recommended to offer options that are as diverse as possible, including things like cheese, yogurt, fruit, vegetables, cereals, juices, and bread. Your teen may walk away with one or several new favorite foods!
We hope that this has given you some inspiration in order to make the most of this summer – exploring, playing, growing, and most importantly, having fun!