Visual Aids We Have In Our Home

 If you are new here, I have created a bunch of digital downloads that are available on my website. There's a number of free downloads, and then there are a bunch of other ones that are available for purchase for $5 each. I've created these over the years mostly for my daughter. She is nine and she's autistic. Over time, we've discovered there are certain things we've needed in our home like a social story or a life skill, just things we thought we should have available every day. When I print these off, I use my laminating machine to make them last longer and tape them to the wall. We have them in the laundry room, the kitchen and family room and our daughter’s room.

Visual Aids We Have in Our Home | Chore Lists

This is the chore list, along with the daily chore list that we have for our daughter. If she wants to play the Switch, she has to complete all of the chores on her chore list and two of the daily chore list items. These are outside of usual expectations of things that she should be doing, like putting her laundry in the laundry basket or putting her dishes in the sink. It's also things that are age-appropriate and things I'm trying to do to help her with daily life activities. The version I have put on the site available for a download is a little bit more generic than what I have on our wall, but it's super helpful. And because I've laminated it, my daughter can check off things she has done, and when we are done for the day, we can wipe it off and reuse it again later.

Visual Aids We Have in Our Home | Summer Activities

The summer activities lists, are things that can either be done independently or that may need a little bit of help with, like painting, for example. I keep these at the bottom of the stairs in our family room so if my daughter comes to me and says, "I'm bored," I can say, "Well, go check your list." Or if she is clearly bored and doesn't say anything to me about it, I can say, "Hey, why don't you go pick an activity from your summer activities list and decide what you're gonna do?"

Visual Aids We Have in Our Home | Laundry Life Skill

The how to do a load of laundry life skill is on the wall in our laundry room. I chose to use both the written out steps as well as the images so that my daughter has options when she is doing a load of laundry. This goes step by step through how to do a load of laundry, what kind of water temperature to use based on the kind of laundry is being washed and what kind of laundry detergent to use.

Visual Aids We Have in Our Home | Choice Boards

On the wall next to the closet in my daughter's room, we have her choice boards. They have all of the different options she has for getting dressed in the morning. I update these probably twice a year, when there's a big overhaul of clothes. I actually need to do an update, because I just went through her closet and took a bunch of stuff out and got her a few new things. I love how easy these are to update and they make getting dressed a lot less overwhelming for my daughter.

Visual Aids We Have in Our Home | Lost Item Checklist

I also created this lost item checklist for my daughter. Something she really struggles with is finding things, even when they are in a very obvious place. She can get really frustrated and worked up when she can’t find what she is looking for so I made this checklist to help her create a process for looking for items before asking for help. It can be hard to get her to go through the steps but when she actually does it, she always ends up finding what she was looking for.

Visual Aids We Have in Our Home | Bathing Life Skill

On the wall in my daughter's shower are all of the steps for bathing on her own. This was another life skill that is available under the Shop section of my site. This has both visuals and a written step by step check list for both taking a shower and taking a bath. My daughter asked for just the written checklist in her bathroom. Another benefit of laminating everything is that they are waterproof, so I was able to put these in the shower.

Visual Aids We Have in Our Home | Visual Schedule Board

The last thing is the visual schedule board that I created. I made a child version, a teen version, and an adult version, and all three of them actually also come in English and Spanish. The schedule boards have tons of different options for activities and places to go and things that everybody needs to do throughout the day, again, whether it be for a child through an adult. These were actually developed with the help of my autistic brother, who really helped me figure out the best things to have for each age range. These are great for kids that really need to be able to see what's happening throughout the day, that struggle with not having structure. They're great for summertime when there isn't a lot of structure, and it also gives kids the opportunity to help participate in what they're doing throughout their day.