Activities

#activities#play#leisure#creativity

The word activity says nothing concrete, and a child who cannot picture what is coming struggles to get ready inside. An image turns the vague into something graspable and shows exactly what the moment holds. Browse the motifs just below.

A smiling boy stands with outstretched arms holding a tennis racket with a basketball and a paintbrush with a book, surrounded by a tennis ball, a music note, a potted plant and a star.

Boy with activity symbols

A smiling boy stands with outstretched arms holding a tennis racket with a basketball and a paintbrush with a book, surrounded by a tennis ball, a music note, a potted plant and a star.

A child paints at an easel with a music note and ball nearby.

Activities

A child paints at an easel with a music note and ball nearby.

A child surrounded by icons for a book, paint palette, ball and building block.

Activities

A child surrounded by icons for a book, paint palette, ball and building block.

About this visual support

A broad word like activity leaves a child without an anchor. Are we drawing, running or sitting still? When the answer is uncertain, resistance builds before anything has happened, and energy goes into guessing instead of joining in.

This is where visual support helps by making the abstract visible. A picture of the specific activity ahead tells the body what to do and roughly how long it lasts, so the child does not have to hold the plan in their head. Spoken words vanish into the air, while an image stays there to look back at whenever needed.

One concrete tip: let the child choose between two picture cards rather than asking openly what to do. Two visible options are easier to weigh than an empty question, and the choice gives the child a sense of having a say. When you want to line up several activities in a row, you can build the day visually in the Routined app, where image, timer and check-off belong together.

Use this image in a schedule

Build your own visual schedule with this image and download it as a print-ready PDF. Completely free.

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.

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* 14-day free trial included for new users.