Snack at the playground
Nobody is hungry in the middle of a game. The body is moving, the friends are still on the slide, and sitting down on a bench feels like leaving something that is still going on. The pictures below show that the play is still there afterwards.
♀Snack at the playground
A girl sits on a swing eating a banana, with a lunch box, juice and an apple on the ground.
About this visual support
Hunger is rarely noticed while something fun is happening. The signals from the body only get through when the pace drops, which is why a snack at the playground is nearly always adult-initiated. The child experiences not a need but an interruption, and interruptions mid-play are hard for the same reason they are hard at home in front of a screen: something is going on, and what is going on feels more important than what is being suggested.
Visual support makes the break part of the outing rather than an obstacle in it. A picture of the snack between two play pictures shows that the game continues afterwards, which is the whole difference. It also gives something to point at in advance, so the interruption does not arrive as a surprise.
A concrete tip is to state the time in the language of the play: after three more turns on the slide, not in five minutes. A measurable end the child can count is easier to accept. In Routined the outing can sit as a short routine with a break built in, 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.
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Take the visual supports with you
In Routined you build schedules from these pictures, add timers and voice instructions, and your child follows the day on their own.
* 14-day free trial included for new users.