Samuel's Visual Schedule, A Visual!

Last weekend Samuel took the liberty of making up his own schedule, both on Saturday and Sunday. Normally I make up a schedule to cover key points of the day, like getting dressed in the morning, or approaching homework sessions, or perhaps special trips out of the house. When I do that, we cover times in between with an icon like "play."

This is the binder that we keep Samuel's schedule "icons" in. The icons are about a 1.5" square. I print them in black and white using "Writing With Symbols" software on my computer. Our in-home services provider prints them in color on "Boardmaker." The icons are laminated. I already had quite a collection of icons when our in-home services started, so we continued using those icons and they have slowly added to them since then. The icons have velcro on the back and they are affixed to velcro strips on laminated pages in the book, an idea our in-home helpers gave me.

Below is a picture of Samuel's schedule that hangs on the wall in our kitchen. This was put up in consultation with our in-home service providers and we started it almost two years ago. At the time we started using it only a total of 5 icons were on the schedule. Then a few months later we increased it to six and eventually the whole row under it was added. The "break" icon was added as we started teaching Samuel to "take a break," a means of getting him to control his own temper as it starts to escalate. At any point he wants to he can pull the "break" icon and go to a special designated area to calm down, take a break, etc... I will discuss this more at a later time.

The activity that Samuel is expected to complete gets moved to a space next to "It is time for..." When he is finished with that activity he removes the icon and puts it in the "finished" pocket. Then he moves the next icon up. He, of course, had to be prompted to learn how to move the icons appropriately, something that he picked up pretty quickly with our in-home service helpers. I'm usually a few steps behind in the prompting process from them. This is the actual schedule Samuel made up on Saturday and I really liked how he spaced his highly reinforcing activities (snack, lunch, play outside, and downstairs) with less desirable things (though they are still somewhat fun for him) like "calendar" and "game." We sat at the table in the kitchen for our "meeting," which ended up being a conversation about what our favorite movie is (he determined that!). We also filled in the calendar that he has. After "calendar" came "videotape." If I remember correctly he did not watch a video, but asked me to get one for him to look at. After lunch he did go play outside, but he never completed the other things on his schedule after that. The last icon is "guitar." Samuel received a guitar for his birthday last year, but he doesn't play it very much yet. I'm hoping he will take lessons some day. Even though he didn't play it Saturday, it's encouraging that he's thinking of it!

I first learned of autistic children using schedules to teach independent behavior in the book Activity Schedules for Children with Autism,Teaching Independent Behavior, by Lynn E. McClannahan and Patricia J. Krantz. This was what inspired me to make up icons for him, I just never did quite get a good system going on my own, something that our in-home service providers turned in the right direction. This has done wonders with keeping Samuel happy on a day-to-day basis, though we still have a long ways to go!