We are getting ready to go on a 21 hour road trip across country to visit family in Idaho. Although we are beyond the moon excited to visits family for the first time in six long years we are a little nervous about the trip. Luckily, my kids do pretty good in the car, but like anything with my boys PREPARATION is the key!
Let’s Get Ready tooooo…. Road Trip
These are a few of the things the boys needed to practice and or understand before we go on our trip.
Luggage- I am trying to increase the boys independence anyway I can. For Vincent, that means picking out his clothes! With this activity he can learn “before we go on our trip we need to pack our bag” it will also help him understand that we get to make choices. “I put this in the bag, so now I get to wear it.” It also just simply helps with following directions. “Let’s put the shirt into the suitcase.”
Road Trip Activities- we are not used to taking long trips. Because of this we don’t have very many car appropriate toys. Some of these activities are items that the boys can enjoy on our trip! However, the boys need to be introduced to most things before I can expect them to just pick them up and begin playing. For this reason I have set aside some small toys that they can learn to play with this week so we are ready to go next week!
Scavenger Hunt- this goes along the same lines as that above. Before I can expect Maxwell and Vincent to just know how to play. I have to introduce it and because they don’t understand communication like your typical three and five year old,,this means I have to physically introduce the activity. To practice for our road trip scavenger hunt I made one for home! The cut out pieces are meant to be taped around the room/rooms depending on how difficult you would like to make the activity. And then the boys are supposed to find the object and cross it off their list! My hope is when we go on our road trip they can perform something like the one listed below!
US States- Vincent is very visual. It helps him to be able to see exactly where we are going and where our final destination is. Because of this, this whole week will be spent learning about what states we will travel through to get to Idaho.
The last thing we are doing to prepare the boys for our road trip is pictures. Unfortunately, this is our first trip to Idaho to visit family. Neither of my children have met the family we are going to visit. So to prepare them for the social aspect of our trip we will be reviewing pictures of the family members in Idaho and learning their names. This is probably the most important part of preparing the boys for our trip.
Sensory Play
This week we are sticking to some of the same tasks we had last center, but switching up the theme. With my boys I’ve learned that they better understand tasks after multiple exposures. For Vincent right now it’s Math, rhyming and textures. For Maxwell it’s color identification and following directions. So we incorporated both of these again this week.
Rhyming cards- notice I used the same words from last center. Vincent hasn’t quiet grasped the concept, so we will keep working on it! One way we have played with these this week is in the sensory bin. Place as many cards in the bin as you want and state “find the card that rhymes with ____.”
I LOVE the small color cards in the sensory bin. We have so many different ways we can play with these. First is another sensory activity. They are small enough to fit into the scoops in our bin so they are easily apart of the box.
Maxwell can also work on color recognition, following directions and sorting with the small cars! Each small car has a corresponding colored garage. Each green car goes into the green garage. Each red car goes into the red garage and so on. The print out that I have attached has five of each color. However, 15 cars is too much of a task for Maxwell to sit through, so always, always adjust anything to your child’s needs.
Another way Vincent has played with them is with the yellow die (his favorite toy this week.) We roll the die and yell out the number. We then can either find the “5 car” if we roll a 5 OR find 5 of the cars from the bin and practice counting. We then write this number on our white board, yell out “PLUS” and roll the die again and repeat the process from above. Like pictured below.
Pretend Play
Last but not least this week is pretend play! We are working with money again. So I figured why not introduce the boys to our number one stop on a road trip… the gas station! The boys can go shopping at the gas station for chips, soda, hot dogs or ice cream! I am a big believer in saving money. So instead of buying new toys for this I shoved a plastic Wal-Mart bag in an old bag of chips and stapled it close. I also saved an old Mountain Dew can. I did put duct tape over the opening of the can so the boys wouldn’t cut their fingers. So far so good.
I also snuck in some more sensory play this week with our “ice cream.” There are three flavors of ice cream; Bubble gum, strawberry and orange sherbet. First, I’ll have the boys take the play dough out of the containers, roll up the play dough into balls and place it back in the grey containers. We will then either scoop the play dough into the cones or a “bowl.” Depending on what the “customer” wants, pay for our ice cream and serve!
That’s all we have done for our center this week! Stay tuned next week to see how our 22 hour road trip with two toddler ASD boys went!
Link for free printable:
Supporting Autism Mamas 