Care4autism

At the outset categorisation sounds easy and simple , given a set of flash cards and the child is asked to sort the pictures into categories , transport, fruits , vegetables, clothing.That would be the basic sorting. However Categorization is a difficult skill for children on the spectrum, and for children with speech disorders and cognitive abilities.Dwell a little deeper into categorisation, categorise transport into air, road  and water, categorize household items. A little deeper , state the functions and ask the child to categorise given the functions of the object, categorise objects in a room, it gets a little trickier.  Identify an object by the senses. For example it taste sweet/ sour. It grows on vines and is green or black in colour. It is a fruit. Name the fruit. Or try giving the objects in a category and ask them to name the category. Taking it a step ahead , discriminate among a given set of objects , pencil, pen,chalk ,door . What is not used for writing? Fur...

                                        Our children are concrete thinkers. Maybe, all of us understand that to some extent. We have been cautioned at some point of time, that a particular concept is abstract for them. But how much and what to what extent should we get into specifics is something that I am slowly realizing. It started with Dr. Yamini in one of the story narration sessions for Ramam. I had a book with no text and just illustration and to my mind; it was the perfect book for Ramam to narrate. One look at it and Dr.Yamini (NIMHANS) said it made no visual sense. The story line is something like this. A boy has to get his kite stuck on a tree -top down. In the illustration, the tree top and a boy sitting on a buffalo were at the same height. To Ramam’s mind he has to just stretch his hands to get the kite down. How is he to visualize the tree top is is at a much higher height ...