Matching is a great activity for young learners on the autism spectrum. A child does not need to be able to discriminate any words to be able to match. For example, matching a yellow duck to an identical yellow duck does not require the child to respond to any sort of verbal input. He does not need to know the word “duck” goes with that object, he only needs to visually see that the ducks are the same. Also many children with autism may like “sameness” and matching activities may be reinforcing for them. You can teach your child to match items, numbers and letters, shapes, colors, categories, associated items, and a host of other concepts.
A general hierarchy might be:
Use identical objects until the child can match novel pairs - pairs that has not been taught before.
Use similar objects (for example, 2 cars that are different in type size and color) until the child can match novel pairs of objects.
Use identical pictures until the child can match novel identical pairs of pictures with at least (After this lesson you can try matching letters, numbers, colors and shapes—you will also want to do identical then similar with these concepts as well. For example with numbers and letters you will eventually incorporate a variety of fonts. With colors you might eventually have them match a certain colored crayon to that color marked on a white piece of paper.)
Use similar pictures until the child can match novel similar pairs of pictures. (After this you can start matching in categories such as animals, foods, and vehicles. For example matching a cat to a dog vs a helicopter to a car.
Use objects to pictures and pictures to objects, identical and then similar. For example- a spoon matched to a picture of that exact spoon, and then a spoon matched to a picture of a different spoon.
Have fun matching!
