This months craft for children with Autism spectrum disorders is a fun memory game that is simple to make. I just happen to come across a wooden 3-D tree one day on sale for .50 cents and thought it would make a nice project to show you guys how easy it is to make your own toys, games and educational lessons when teaching your children.

It doesn’t matter whether your kids are on the spectrum or not, all these projects I am sharing with you can be helpful for all levels and ages of children.

Supplies needed:

Cardboard or card stock to trace a tree onto

Variety of card stock colors for leaves

Permanent markers or paint markets.

Assorted pictures from old magazines or photos

Tacky glue

Scissors

Velcro strips.

Trace out a tree shape and decorate. There are several templates online. I found my tree on sale at Target in their dollar section for Fall decor. I added fabric to my tree using decoupage. You can decorate your trees however you like. When working with children with ASD (Autism spectrum disorders) remember to keep things simple. This tree is a bit busy with colors but I did that for the colorful photos I like to take when working on DIY projects. Otherwise I would have stuck with green or brown when covering this tree.

I also covered my leaves with fabric for added colors. Then I added Velcro stickers to my tree and leaves.

I used paint markers to draw numbers, letters and shapes to match up with. Children can match the number of dots to numbers and the letters together. Later when they are more advanced with upper and lower case letters they can match things up that way.

When working with any special needs children remember to adjust the games to a level that they are at to prevent melt downs and frustrations. There were many hours of sitting at a table doing ABA therapy with visual alphabet cards when teaching my son his letters. We went from “Give me the letter a” to “What letter is this?” when I was teaching him. Then we went on to fun table games like memory match games.

You can cut out photos from old books, magazines or draw similar items when designing your leaves for your trees. I have everything written on the front to make things easier, but you can also write or add your photos to the backs when playing the memory part of the game.

Matching and memory games-

Improve concentration

Train visual memory

Increase short term memory

Increase attention to detail

Improve ability to find similarities and differences in objects.

Help to classify objects that are grouped together by similar traits

Improve vocabulary

For some more fun paper crafts to do with children check out Mel https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/110322756, she is so good at that and has a lot of really cool paper crafts to do with your children.Happy crafting with your children everyone.