Don’t let it deceive you. Play isn’t just fun and good times for kiddos. It’s essential for your child’s overall development. ALL children learn through experiencing, seeing, listening and doing…....which is the essence of play. This is true for all children…..typical children and children with disabilities.

Let’s take another all time favorite play activity and break it down. Watercolors! Your child’s speech therapist, occupational therapist or play therapist may use watercolors frequently in sessions. You may think to yourself, “watercolors again?!?! When does the actual work start?!?! Where are the flashcards? Where are the fancy programs and materials?!?” The beauty of play is…..your child is actually working incredibly hard AND having fun at the same time. From a speech and language perspective, here are just some of the things your child may be working on when they play with watercolors by themselves, in a therapy session, with an adult or with friends:

-Joint Attention: When playing with watercolors with your child, you are working on improving their joint attention skills such as increasing their ability to share your enjoyment of the watercolors activity, to share their enjoyment with you, to be engaged within the activity together, to gaze shift from the objects to your eyes and from your eyes to the objects for social referencing, to monitor and follow your eye gazing, to initiate bids with you to pay attention to what they are doing/attending to and to respond to these bids from others. Joint attention is an important precursor for social communication and interaction.

-Receptive and Expressive Language: Single words, phrases and sentences, etc. There is SO MUCH language involved when playing with watercolors. For example:
-nouns: water, paint, paper, paintbrush, all the objects you can paint, etc.
-verbs: open, close, paint, pour, etc.
-descriptors: in, out, on, off, up, colors, down, fast, slow, big, little, long, short, tall, same, different, dark, light, wet, dry, cool, fun, colors, happy, sad, mad, silly, excited, etc.

-Understanding and Using Social Communication: There are a million different social opportunities within watercolors! For instance:
-Initiating requests “I want purple paint”
-Requesting continuation “more”
-Terminating interaction “finished”
-Asking for “help”
-Protesting “no blue paint!”
-Securing attention “Mommy!!!” or tapping Mommy’s arm
-Directing attention “Look!!”
-Turn-taking “My turn for blue paint.” “Your turn for black paint.”
-Sharing/Giving/Trading “Share paintbrush.” “Give brush to Dad.”
-Showing: “Look Dad! I painted a cat!”
-Initiating social comments, responding to social comments and engaging in conversations
-Asking questions to gain information
-Talking about what you like and don’t like
-Much more!

Emotional Regulation Skills:
-Waiting
-Responding to “okay”
-Labeling/sharing emotions (“Lauren is happy! Lauren likes watercolors!” “Greg is mad! Greg wants green paint!”)

-Play Skills: There are many different types of play skills you can work on and integrate within a watercolors activity:
-Constructive play: constructing something out of the painting activity, painting several pieces and then cutting and gluing together to construct a watercolor flower
-Symbolic (pretend) play: painting something and playing with it symbolically, such as painting a duck and then pretending it’s swimming in the lake
-Parallel play: increasing your child’s ability to play with their own watercolors parallel (next to) another person playing with their own watercolors at the same table
-Cooperative play: painting together with another person
You can integrate these different skills and work on different things at the same time (Constructive/Cooperative play, Parallel/Pretend play, etc.)

Sequencing: Understanding the sequencing language, using the sequencing language and completing the steps (first choose color, in water, in paint, on paper, etc.)

Preliteracy: You can use ABC pages to paint and work on certain sounds of the letters, sound segmentation, sound blending, rhyming and more.

Themes: You can engage in a watercolors theme to incorporate different vocabulary and play skills. For instance, for Mother’s Day you can work on the Mother’s Day vocabulary by painting hearts, flowers, a card for Mommy and much more.

On top of all the wonderful speech and language skills incorporated within watercolors, there are of course all the important fine motor skills, visual-spatial skills, and sensory integration components as well! The possibilities are truly endless. This is the case with all play!

To help your child with autism make watercolors or any other play activity a meaningful learning experience, we can use various transactional supports. We can use play routines (playing in a similar way each time to help them understand and interact then once they are understanding the routine and are successful within the routine, you can change the routine up to help them continue to learn and think dynamically), we can sing while we paint, we can use helpful phrases while we paint, we can use visuals (picture symbols, how-to visual boards, my turn cards, waiting cards, commenting boards, etc.) and we can break down our language while limiting the use of questions.

Also, we may need to start slowly with watercolors or any other play activity. We do not want to force the activity upon our children. Your child may need to stand back and watch you paint by yourself for a while. Then your child may come closer to the table and watch. They then may need to physically explore the paint and paintbrush for a while to get used to the sequencing. Then they may want to sit and play for a little longer. After some time and after your child becomes more comfortable and understands more, you will be playing parallel with your child and then cooperatively!

All children learn and develop naturally through interacting with the people around them, through exploring their environments, through participating within routines and through PLAY (experiencing, seeing, listening and doing). Not only is this the effective way for all children to learn but it’s also the FUN way for all children to learn. And most importantly, you will be bonding with your child and building on your relationship with your child while helping them learn and make progress. It’s not just play!

~Laura and Amanda
KidSpeak, LLC
www.kidspeakdallas.com