How old is he? What are his strengths and weaknesses?

How about “Who am I?”
Try to imitate people or characters he is familiar with and tell him to guess who it is.

How old is he? Mine loved the game Guess Who? Where you have a person, and you name characteristics, and try to guess who the other person has. The older version is better than the newer version. Ravensburger has some fun games, like Mix Max and Rivers, Roads and Rails, which is like dominoes but with roads and boats and trains.

Do they have to necessarily be games? How about art activities? Of course, this may depend on a few things, but there are some great artsy things you can do with him that can also get him to express himself. Painting is fun, but you can also do stuff with construction paper. Like, teach him to cut shapes out of them and move on into making the shapes into people and familiar objects like houses and cars. Then glue them down. One of my fave art activities is to take a small sheet of white paper and color it with a rainbow of color using crayons. Then you take a black oil pastel and color over the whole image. Now take a tooth pick and draw on it (kind of like a scratch board) and reveal the color underneath! It’s quite fun to do and can really surprise him!

Spools of thread in every color you can find (and afford). The kid might arrange them in order of gradation or come up with a mosaic, you never know.

@gailcalled he is 10. Strengths and weakness’s are too long to go into, but I will point out I like to do things that involve his brother too (he is 7) otherwise he tends to go into his ‘bubble world’ and I like him to participate with us as much as possiable.
He has in the last few weeks just gotten into numbers.

@queenie Great idea but his level of commuinticaion is not that great and if i change my voice or pull funny faces he either ignores it because he does not understand or gets freaked out because he does not recogise my voice.

@BarnacleBill Never heard of Mix, Max and Rivers and Roads and Rails, but I will look them up.
He is into colours at the moment and trying to get him to say them, also like the idea of dominoes could try and incorperate something into those.

@Glow Toothpicks and sciccors are a def no go with him, they are too dangerous lol. But I could do painting with his hands, he loves to paint.

@Neizvestnaya Great Idea one I will def try, thanks.

Aw dang, sorry then. :P I teach art to elementary kids, but never had experience with autism, so I don’t know their limits.

@BeccaBoo: I’m not autistic but when a kid then I’d rearrange the thread spools and embroidery shanks in the fabric stores and it was sooooo fun! Not so much fun for the clerks. Another thing you could look into is ordering a large set of colored pencils from an office supply (they’re immensely less expensive than going to an art store). I imagine an autistic kid not only would love the dozens of colors but also the sound of the pencils rolling against each other.

@Neizvestnaya We have a huge art box that he dips into of his own accord now and then, I don’t know about the arranging things yet, this may come later as he is just to keen to get at the paints and crayons to draw with. But right about the sounds he does enjoy pencils and crayons clinking together :-)

Oh i’m the perfect person to help you here.
My older brother is autistic.
So tell me about him and you know… we have something in common lol

@Tay122 Without going into too much detail about him, what would you like to know?

well what does he like? cars, baseball?

Colours, art and numbers! Thats about it for the moment, although I have a sneaky suspicion he is starting to get a thing for areoplanes as he looks into the sky and smiles and laughs when he see’s them.

You could show him a paper airplane and tell him he can color it how ever he wants. and then you can play a game where there are rings and in each ring is a number (the points). then he can fly or slide the airplane into a ring to get points.

Numbers and colors! There are refrigerator magnets of colored plastic in both numbers and the alphabet.

I had these cardboard bricks when I was a kid. They’re incredibly durable and I just donated them a few years ago to my friend’s special Ed class. She says her autistic students love to sort and build with them (though they get upset when other students move them out of the “correct” order).

You could cut some basic shapes of clothes out of colored felt, like shirts, pants, dresses, hats, coats etc. and put a piece of velcro on the back. Then you can take a bigger piece of felt and use a black marker to make an outline drawing of a boy and a girl (or a mother and father) with a face drawn on, so it’s obvious who’s who, then have your son pick out a red shirt for the Dad or a pair of blue pants for the mom and have him stick them onto the people outlines. You could do the same thing with fruits and vegetables, only you will have to get a bigger piece of felt (which you could actually staple onto a frame to make it easier to use) and then you would draw the outline of a carrot and apple and lemon and pear etc. and then have those same shapes and their appropriate colors cut out the same size in felt with velcro on the back.

You could also take just about any kind of magazine, but especially ones that have advertisements for clothing and cars in them. Go through the magazines so that you know what kinds of pictures are in each magazine (maybe make a little list for you to look at) then have you son go through one of the magazines to look for a blue dress or to look for a red car.

You could also get a bunch of random household objects that have distinct colors, make sure that you get at least 3 items of each color (black, white, red, yellow, orange, blue, green) and put them all into the middle of the floor or a bowl on the table. Then pick a color and have him find the other objects with the same color and match them up.

I mentioned in another thread that one of my nephews (now 18) is autistic. My mum lived near my sister and looked after the boys while my sister worked. I’ll ask her if she has any good ideas – she was a nursery teacher also.

I like @Kardamom‘s suggestion of fabric shapes – I was just thinking of that as I read through. You could also get glue and make random pictures from the odd shapes. Getting him to dress up figures using the clothes in the right order (underpants before trousers!) will be good too, if he has sequencing problems like my nephew did.

I can’t think of anything more colorful than a deck of Uno.

Its a card game and is great for all ages to play with each other, even adults, because anyone can win so it gives the kids a fair chance to win over an adult. It’s also random enough not to be too predictable or boring for an adult and your 7 year old should enjoy it as well.

They also come in oversized as well as regular decks.

It’s one of these oldies but goodies which has withstood the test of time. Super easy to learn but random enough to remain interesting even after repeated playing.

Should be easy to find in most Dept. stores like K-Mart or Walmart. Toys R Us should have it for sure.