Social Skills

I've found some great resources on Social Skills that would be good to share. A psychology collegue introduced me all these resources. She has run social skills groups with kids with high-functioning autism in the past.

Perhaps my favorite resource is a book titled "The Social Skills Picture Book" by Jed Baker. It is available on the author's website, but is actually cheaper to buy on Amazon. I think it is a a great resource for teaching play, emotion and communication skills to children with autism. The book has a step-by-step breakdown for teaching each social skill....from 'greeting' to 'listening during a conversation' to 'compromising during play' to 'keeping calm'.
**Side note- Jed Baker also has a version for older students- 'Social Skills Picture Book for High School and Beyond'.

The book has wonderful photographs to go with each target skill set. I think this would be the biggest plus to purchasing this book- the visuals are large and clear; and there is only 1-2 photos per page (not making it too busy). 

There are also photos differentiating the 'Wrong way' of dealing with a situation , and the 'Right way'.  This has proved to be very helpful for the children I've used this book with.

Another reason why the visuals are so great are the talking bubbles and thought bubbles on the photos. It states everything that the child is wondering/thinking or saying, leaving nothing to guesswork. This is what our kids need! They need every part of the conversation spelled out for them. This is how they learn best.

During one of our peer play groups, we have introduced a social skills each week, reviewed the book, role-played the scenario. Then to make it even more personal, we took pictures of the 2 participants and created social stories that mirrored the ones in the Jed Baker book (except that it now had our actual kids in them).