Development of General Knowledge for Children with Autism
The Importance of General Knowledge for Children with Autism
It is important that children with autism develop a broad base of meaningful general knowledge. Only when a child has a wealth of general knowledge can he engage in a meaningful way with objects, animals and people. Children need general knowledge for social skills, play, reading comprehension and other learning activities. Children with autism may need more explicit and repetitive opportunities to learn general knowledge, but this extra work early on will provide great benefits.
Children typically learn best when they have direct experiences. They can also learn through play, instruction, books, shows, and videos. For example, if a child’s family has a pet dog, the child will learn by direct experience a lot about dogs. He will learn that dogs have fur, that they wag their tail, that they like treats and toys, that they bark, etc. Children can also learn about dogs by playing with a stuffed dog. Your child can be shown how to pet, feed and play with the toy dog. Children can also learn through reading or watching shows or videos about dogs. Later when your child is hearing or reading a book about a dog the general knowledge he has about dogs will help him to understand and relate to the story. Likewise if someone tells him about their pet dog, his knowledge of dogs will help him to follow the conversation and ask on topic questions.
A useful way to structure direct and intentional teaching of general knowledge is through categorizing topics. Categories to initially consider include animals, food, vehicles, seasons/holidays, family and community helpers, and any special interests your child may have. Teaching general knowledge can and should be accomplished in a variety of ways: hands on experiences, play based experiences, TV shows, videos, books and worksheets can all be used. An example of how this can be accomplished even over the course of one day is described below.
Let’s learn about Fruit!
Show your child how to cut up fruit to make a fruit salad. With your assistance, your child can cut soft fruits such as bananas and strawberries with a plastic knife. While doing so, talk about the various fruits. Fruits grow on plants and have seeds, can you find the seeds in each fruit? How does each fruit taste?
Use pretend food to make a fruit salad. Which foods would go in a fruit salad? Which foods wouldn’t go in a fruit salad? If you don’t have pretend food, you can use colored blocks to represent the fruits. “Let’s put in some strawberries, strawberries are red.”
The book The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle is an interesting book that features a lot of different fruits.
Worksheet - Depending on your child’s ability you can either draw a bowl with some fruit in it for him to color or you can draw a bowl and fruits for him to color and then cut and paste in the bowl. Does he know which color each fruit is? You can add a challenge by including some foods that are not fruits - ex. Does pizza go in our fruit salad?
Whenever your child eats a fruit you can provide even more information. Oh that’s a yellow banana. Bananas grow together on trees. You have to peel a banana before you eat it. Can you think of another fruit you have to peel before you eat it?
If grocery shopping with your child you can point out all the different fruits in the produce section.
Acquiring general knowledge will help your child see relationships between objects and himself, increase his self-confidence, and will fuel his desire to learn more. It is only when a child demonstrates an intrinsic motivation to learn that a true passion for learning is achieved.
Occupational therapists and speech-language pathologists at the Pediatric Development Center can help your child develop that motivation.
