Coffee break
A pause with no content is hard to take, and for many children carrying on feels easier than sitting still for a while. The pictures below give the break a shape, from the cup on the table to the moment it is over.
♂Having a coffee
A man sits at a table holding a steaming mug, with a biscuit in front of him.
About this visual support
It sounds backwards, but resting can be the hardest point of the day. A break has no task, no clear beginning or end, and a child who does not know what to do inside one will often fill it with something else, or skip it altogether. A coffee break is therefore not only food and drink: it is a pause that happens to have content, and the content is what makes it possible to take.
Pictures suit this well because a break like this is a short chain with natural steps: fetch the cup, pour, take something to eat, sit down, finish, put the cup away. That gives the pause edges without turning it into a job. One tip changes a lot: let a picture mark where the break ends, the empty cup in the sink for example. Without an end point a child cannot tell whether the break is over, and that uncertainty is often what makes the rest feel restless.
With Routined the break can sit as its own step between two activities, with a picture and a time, and the app can be tried for fourteen days at no cost.
Use this image in a schedule
Build your own visual schedule with this image and download it as a print-ready PDF. Completely free.
More similar visual supports
Afternoon Snack And Relax
A girl relaxes in a cozy beanbag chair holding a juice box and a slice of fruit.
Afternoon snack
A girl eating an orange slice and holding a cracker. Day, night, and clock icons...
Coffee
A brown coffee mug with steaming hot coffee.
Drink coffee
Illustration of a woman holding a steaming mug of coffee.
Eat afternoon snack
An illustration of a girl eating a banana. She has a plate with cookies and grap...
Eat snack
A person in a blue t-shirt eating a chocolate chip cookie.
Have a snack
A person holds and eats a small round snack.
Home snack
A house next to a plate with a banana, a watermelon slice, and warm berries.