Picture Communication Card Resources

Yesterday Pod and I met with E at the library to look at ways of supporting Pod during storytime. Unfortunately it was far busier than usual and so that, plus the addition of E at the session was quite disorienting for Pod.

E showed me some ways of helping her participate and not feel as worried around other children - which was good, and she also put me onto some great online resources for picture communication cards.

Today, the laminator arrived, so guess what I'm going to be doing tonight? This is reminding me of my days as an ESL teacher when I would make my own teaching mats. Print, cut, laminate, repeat.

So, here are some flashcard/picture communication card resources that I've found:

Super Simple Learning - E put me on to this resource, the flashcards are really nicely designed and often coupled with songs. However, when I went to download them, each flashcard was A4 sized. For teachers with a classroom full of kids that want to see, this is great, but for a mum just wanting to help her kid, it's a little much.

Kids Pages Flashcards - This is a fabulous page for action flashcards and basically any material for maybe creating a sequence of events to help explain what's going to happen to your child. There are so many different categories and for the most part, I think they're well designed. I also printed a few random 'round the house' type flashcards for a scavenger game idea I had (to check comprehension and vocabulary).

Practical Autism Resources - There are some communication gems in this collection. Many thanks to my friend Susan for the heads up on this one. Flashcards are photos rather than cartoons, which is also nice.

Living Well With Autism - My kid has no diagnosis, but it's really impressive how many resources Autism support groups have put together. I really like this pragmatic language board, I can see it being very useful.

We had another 'win' for the schedule yesterday (some of the above cards are going to also be used for making schedule v2.0). Bath time is an issue for Pod, and so I tried using the schedule to let Pod know what was happening. I went through it with her, and then said/signed "Ok?", and she nodded yes! She was still upset during her bath, I tried to use the emotions card that E gave me to ask her how she felt, but there was none for 'scared' and she was too wrapped up in her feelings anyway. Oh well, it was worth a try.

Speaking of the emotions card, she also indicated to 'calm' (at dinner), and 'tired'.

I'm counting those as 'wins'.