Attention Autism Ideas

Our team of Speech & Language therapists have pulled together 30 fantastic ‘Attention Autism’ ideas for you to try at home. But before you start, you’ll need to familarise yourself with the process of how we deliver the Attention Autism activities.

The Attention Autism programme is divided into four stages, each with a specific focus:

Stage 1: The Bucket
Stage 2: The Attention Builder
Stage 3: Taking Turns & Interaction
Stage 4: Individual Activities

For more information on the Attention Autism programme, read our blog – What is Attention Autism?

Stage 1 – The Bucket

Be prepared

Place some motivating toys such as wind up toys, musical toys and light up toys in a bucket, bin or large plastic bag. The main purpose of this exercise is to capture the child’s attention, teach the child to independently focus on the adult-led agenda and to take the risk of trying something new.

Make sure your bucket has simple, motivating and appealing toys/objects. Novelty and things they’ve not seen before are good. For example – bubbles, balloons, jack in the box, light spinners, foam rockets, funny glasses, party blowers, party hat, party popper, funny mask, pop up toy, pop up puppet, rice shaker etc.

Lorna Bailey our Lead Specialist Speech & Language Therapist advises;

“Avoid including anything in the bucket that your child already loves playing with. This can be upsetting if they see their favourite toy but are not allowed to play with it. Also think about your child’s sensory differences and avoid toys they may find distressing.

Getting started

Clear the environment of distractions and seat your child opposite you to support your child’s attention. Draw a visual timetable – start by drawing a bucket on a little whiteboard or piece of paper and write “bucket” underneath.

Gently bang the bin and sing to the tune of ‘Here we go round the Mulberry Bush’ – “I’ve got something in my bucket, in my bucket, in my bucket. I’ve got something in my bucket and I wonder what it is?”

Remove an item and play with it for one minute. Repeat song and remove another item. Things don’t always go to plan and your child may get up and walk off. This is okay – simply accept that they may take a while to focus. Aim for one minute the first day (finish the session after one toy has been shown) and move on from there.

Ending the session

Say “it’s finished” or sign “finished”, cross the bucket off on the visual timetable and move on to another activity. It might be helpful to follow the session with a favourable activity such as a snack, if this is enjoyable for your child.

Top Tips for playing the ‘What’s in my bucket?’ game:

Highly Specialist Speech & Language Therapist, Becka Pitts has shared these top tips ….

It may seem mean but only the leading adult is allowed to touch the toys. Many children have single channelled attention so if they are playing with the toys, they are not focusing on you. Keep your distance so little hands don’t feel tempted to pick up the toys.
Try to keep your language to a minimum at this point because you want your child to look at the object, pay attention to it and engage with it visually. You will be looking at it also and so you will all have the same shared experience. Add words gradually – you may instinctively want to start adding in language, but it is important to stay quiet and allow for thinking time. Then gradually increase the language – “Ooh it’s a dog, the dog just flipped, again, flip, the dog flipped”.
Avoid using other reinforcers when carrying out Attention Autism sessions. This is because we want the child to be focusing on the adult led activity and not on their reinforcer. The child can then be given a reinforcer or reward at the end of the session.
Repeat and grow the sessions – aim to carry out the session 4/5 times a week, start at 1 minute and build up slowly. When your child can attend for 5 minutes, you’re ready for Stage 2 and remember ‘if it’s fun, they’ll come!’

Stages 2-4: Attention, Interaction & Independent Play

Once you’ve completed anything from five to ten bucket activities, your child should be ready for the next stages.

Stage 2 – The Attention Builder

This involves demonstrating a longer activity that stretches their attention span for up to 10 minutes. It has a clear beginning, middle and end.

Draw your visual timetable – start by splitting the white board in two. Draw a bucket on one side as before and a picture of your attention builder activity on the other side. Deliver bucket time as in previous sessions and then cross it off your visual timetable. Continue to keep your language to a minimum because you want your child to watch the activity, pay attention to it and engage with it visually.

Name the object e.g. “sieve, flour” etc. and the actions. For example you might just say “shake, shake, shake” as you sprinkle the flour.

If your child wants to join in, that’s great, because it means they are engaged. But you gently tell them, “It’s mummy’s/daddy’s turn” and they accept this, because they have become used to the idea that your role is to show them things while theirs is to relax and enjoy watching.

Stage 3 – Taking Turns & Interaction

Turn taking is a deeply social skill, which does not make a lot of sense if you are not socially aware. However, if you do it as an attention shift, children with autism seem to be able to learn it much more easily. As they become accustomed to the routine of transferring their attention from watching to taking part, and back to watching again, they do not actually need to understand the social skill underpinning what they are doing.

This stage can be difficult to deliver if there is only you and your child at home, as its focus is on taking turns and accepting if they do not always get to have a turn. If there are other children or adults in the home, they should be invited to join in too. However if there is only you and your child it will still work.

Create your visual timetable – start by splitting the white board into three – draw a bucket on one side as before, a stage 2 activity and add a stage 3 activity. Deliver bucket time and stage 2 activity as in previous sessions and then cross them off your visual timetable. Continue to keep your language to a minimum because you want your child to watch the activity, pay attention to it and engage with it visually.

Once you have both taken turns, you have created a shared experience which binds you together, making communication and interaction easier. After a few turns, the activity is ‘finished’ and crossed off your visual timetable.

Stage 4 – Independent Activities

In the final stage, your child can take this one step further by learning how to focus on you as lead adult, and then shifting their attention to an individual activity before returning to you.

Your child will watch you demonstrate an activity, and then they each get their own set of materials and try it out for themselves. For example, they might watch you create a spiky playdough caterpillar, a spaghetti monster or a pretend cake. Then they go to a table, unpack their materials and get busy. When time is up, they come back to you to share what they have done.

The results usually look terrific, but that is not what matters the most. It is the process that counts. From learning to watch a wind-up toy for a few moments, the children have progressed to being able to follow a demonstration, go away, do it independently, and then return to show it as a member of a group. The development of their attention skills has made that possible.

As always, create your visual timetable – start by splitting the white board into four – draw a bucket on one side as before, a stage 2 and 3 activity and add a stage 4 activity on the other side. Deliver bucket time, stage 2 and stage 3 activities as in previous sessions and then cross them off your visual timetable as you complete them. Continue to keep your language to a minimum because you want your child to watch the activity, pay attention to it and engage with it visually.

When it is complete, ask them to come and show you so you can share their creations.

Attention Autism Ideas

Water Based Activities

Lemonade Fountain – Open a lemonade bottle and pour some food colouring inside, watching it swirl down. Pour in another colour and watch them mix. Put the lid back on firmly, shake well and place on a large black tray. Count 1..2…3…and open it- “Lemonade fountain!”

Singing in the Rain – Place a shower curtain on the floor. Pour water into a bottle and add blue food colouring. Pour the water onto the shower curtain while singing “Singing in the rain”.

Waterfalls – Get an empty 2 litre bottle and pierce holes In the bottom. Take 4 plastic cups and add a drop of different food colouring to each and fill them with water. Pour the contents of each individual cup into the bottle making a waterfall of different colours coming out of the holes in the bottom of the bottle.

Moving Blobs – Half fill a 2 litre bottle clear bottle with water. Fill almost to the top with oil using a funnel. Let the oil and water separate. Add drops of food colouring and let them sink through the oil to mix with the water. Add pieces of Alka-Seltzer to start the coloured blobs moving through the oil.

Bubble Sock – Have a bottle ready made with the bottom end cut off, attach an old sock to the cut end with an elastic band then dip this part into soapy water and blow through the top of the bottle to make the bubbles come out!

Paint & Glitter

Blow Painting – Easy and fun to do, simply put blobs of runny paint on a large sheet of white paper and blow with a straw to make patterns.

Space Splat – Pour water into small glasses and add some food colouring. Dip cotton wool into the water and throw them onto white paper!

Glitter Spider – Draw a cobweb with glue, cover with glitter and add a plastic spider.

Growing flowers – Place a flower pot down on its side and then get some green paint and squeeze it to make the flower stem grow! Then place a fake flower or some tied tissue at the top to make a flower!

Butterfly Wings – Fold a piece of paper in half and open it up. Paint wings on one side of the paper, fold it together again and unfold it to reveal a beautiful butterly. Sprinkle with glitter!

Painting Rainbows – Simply cut up a sponge and get a selection of coloured paints. Create a rainbow by dipping the sponges in the paint and blobbing on the paper.

Wacky Races – Get 3 different coloured paints and 3 wind-up toys. Get a long sheet of black paper and put 3 blobs of paint in a row across the width of the paper. Wind the toys up before setting each one off through the paint and see which goes the furthest. If you don’t have wind up toys, simply drive some toy cars/trucks through the paint to make a pattern.

Foam Play

Foam Squish – Take a large ziplock bag and spray shaving foam into it. Then add different colour paint and mix them together between your hands.

Foam Clouds – Fill a plastic cup or jug with water and add shaving foam to the top. Add food colouring into the shaving cream until it starts to fall down through the water.

Flower Pot Snakes – Place upturned mugs or small flower pots (with tape over the holes) on a tray and squirt shaving foam on top. Squeeze some paint on top and then get a larger plant pot and place over the top so the foam comes through like coloured snakes.

Fish Bowl Foam – If you have an old fish bowl fill it with water and spray shaving foam on top of the water to the rim of the bowl. Pour tiny bits of different food colouring in to make colourful rain drops.

Water Waves – Spray some shaving foam on a tray and add some food colouring to it. Pierce holes in a paper cup and pour water through it to drizzle over the foam. Shuffle the tray back and forth to make colourful foamy waves.

Kitchen Play

Tapioca Tumble – Slowly fill a long clear plastic tube with rice, dried beans, peas or lentils. When full, slowly tip the contents into a large black tray from a height. To create different sounds, put things in the tray e.g. a xylophone, scrumpled paper, a drum or a biscuit tin.

Flour Faces – Sieve flour onto a suface & draw a face.

Salt Pictures – Get some black paper and put salt in a clear plastic cup with a hole in the bottom. Use the cup to create salt pictures on the black paper.

Egg Splat – Squirt shaving foam on a flat surface, squeeze yellow paint on the top and splat with a fly swat.

Skittles Rainbow – Place Skittles (sweets) in a circle around edge of a plate then add warm water from the outside edge and watch the effect.

Fizzing Stars – You’ll need bicarbonate of soda, vinegar, glitter and star cookie cutters. Sprinkle bicarbonate of soda inside the cookie cutters, sprinkle over some glitter, add some vinegar and watch them fizz.

Honey Drip – Lay some tin foil on the floor. Using a squeezable honey jar squeeze honey over the foil. Use words such as ‘fast’ and ‘slow’, ‘long’ and ‘short’.

Flour Sneeze – Pour flour into a sieve and then just as you’re about to sieve, fake sneeze in to the sieve. Say “Ooh sneezing!”. The flour should go everywhere!

Flour Stencils – Cut out a stencil of an age appropriate shape. Put the stencil on to a sheet of black paper and sieve some flour over the stencil. Remove the stencil to reveal the shape.

Milky Patterns – Fill a dish with milk and drop food colouring randomly into it. Dip a cotton bud into a dish with soap or washing up liquid and then dip it into the milk to see the colours react.

Less Mess!

Stacking Cups – Stack paper cups counting out to 10 and then say “ready steady GO” and knock them down!

Feather Races – Lay out a length of black material/paper. Make a start line and finish line out of glitter. Line up the feathers and say “On your marks, get set, GO!” Blow the feathers through a straw to the finish line and celebrate!

Make a Face – Use craft or natural materials to make a face. For example, outline the face using wool, and take feathers, leaves or more wool to make some hair. Find stones, buttons or scrunch some coloured paper paper for the eyes, nose and mouth.

We hope you get a chance to experiment with some of the Attention Autism Ideas we’ve shared.

We’d love to see your photos/videos or if you’re sharing your child’s development on social media please tag us on Instgram @islts_speech_therapy and FaceBook @independentspeechandlanguageservices