Clubs and Activities for Kids with High Functioning Autism

~ Laura

I’m tossing out a quick article this morning. Top Ten Ways to Include Autistic Kids into Public Schools or something like that. One idea is to have open up the computer lab for Minecraft, during school dances. Other ideas?

Published by Laura

12 thoughts on “Clubs and Activities for Kids with High Functioning Autism”

  1. Games clubs card games and board games, like munchkin, magic, . . . .
    Maker spaces? with geek crafts?
    Movies during school dances
    Kids run the music lists/audio/lights?
    Kids doing photography

    (I think I’m being narrower, in the sense of thinking what kind of social activities could a spectrummy kid participate in at a school dance; I think I know a few, who are on the spectrum, but also with excellent academic skills — tasks like photography & music would work for them, because their difficulty isn’t lights & noise, but the unregulated social interaction).

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  2. My kids’ school has after-school minecraft, lego engineering and science olympiad. My HFA kid has successfully participated in all of them. The Boy Scout troop has been great for him. Clean-up day and gardening days (Fall and Spring clearnings for the school’s teaching garden) have also been fun. Movie night is also popular.

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  3. This may be very specific to my kid, but he’d love gym class type intramurals. After elementary school, sports teams are too competitive for him to make it. Intramurals are only offered for short periods and focus on one sport per season, so since he’s not into basketball or lacrosse, they’re not for him. Intramurals that had varying activities and focused on game playing (not practice/ skill building) would be perfect for him and help make up for the amount of time he spends in front of the computer. (Other kids can play pickup games; he can’t.)

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  4. My kids’ school (private, single-sex) has “mixers” in sixth and seventh grade, not dances. So the area schools rotate in hosting them, but in the one I recently saw, there was a dance “floor” set up int he corner of a gym, with volleyball in another corner and ping-pong in a third. Then in a large room right off the gym, there were tables set up with board games, chess, checkers, etc. I like this much more as a model for kids to mingle and be social in 6th/7th grade, no matter where they are on the spectrum.

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  5. “I like this much more as a model for kids to mingle and be social in 6th/7th grade, no matter where they are on the spectrum.”

    yes, lots of non-spectrum kids don’t like to dance yet, and some of them are not ready for the pretend MS relationships that start (or the real ones) as well as cultural preferences against that kind of mingling at such a young age (which varies from culture to culture).

    Kids might come up with some other suggestions, too, with what they’d like to do with their friends in a group social setting.

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      1. Zombie dancing, my kiddo calls it. Picture a girl and boy, standing as far apart as possible, hands on shoulder and waist, shuffling.

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      3. Oh, and let’s not forget that the girl is half a head taller than the boy, for extra awkwardness.

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  6. My kids were often freaked out by the sheer size of the social events at, for example, an elementary school with 600 kids. If everyone brought their parents for a bingo night or something, the noise of all those people in a room like a gym where noise bounced off the walls was just too much for them. Maybe smaller events for smaller groups of kids?

    And the number one ‘spectrum friendly’ activity to include in school dances and the like? (Drum roll please). A bouncy house! I’m not sure why, but every field day, open day, school dance, etc. has a bouncy house and it’s excellent for all our little Aspies (and some of the big ones!)

    Our kid’s school also has a field day that seems to use a lot of what previously used to be called New games — noncompetitive things that usually seem to involve throwing water balloons or tying people together and then asking them to untangle themselves, etc. Things where no one keeps scores and no one gets mad at the kid who’s a bit slower to understand what’s going on. (my kids all had trouble figuring out the rules to things like dodge ball. A game where no one knows the rules and it gets explained first is great for them.)

    Aspie girls might like a craft table at a school dance?

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