Celebrate World Autism Awareness Day With These 7 Activities

This Sunday, the 2nd of April, the world will once again focus its attention on autism with the aim of raising awareness and encouraging political changes that improve the lives of people affected by autism or Asperger syndrome throughout the world. As a teacher or a parent, you can also contribute to this fight, by celebrating this day with our Autism Awareness Day activities. 

More than 1 in every 54 children in the U.S. is diagnosed with autism every year. This means that most kids during their school years will come in contact with autistic children. When this happens, it’s our responsibility to make sure kids are understanding, accepting, and do not discriminate against those who are different from them. For teachers, more than anyone else, this is an essential prerequisite for effective classroom management.

A great way to help kids get to a point where they embrace diversity is by using the opportunity that World Autism Awareness Day offers and teach kids something more about the behaviors and actions that may arise in children with autism. To help you in this task, we’ll cover 7 different activities for kids of all ages. 

7 Autism Awareness Day Activities for Kids

Depending on your time, resources, and kids’ grade-level, we’ve picked seven different ways of celebrating Autism Awareness Day with your students. You can go for something as simple as dressing up in blue and having an open conversation with children, or organizing a campaign and involving students in bigger projects! Everything we do has an impact, so let’s dive in!

Dress Up in Blue!

A symbolic way of honoring Autism Awareness Day is to tell all kids in the class to wear blue on Sunday. The reasoning behind this is to capture everyone’s attention with the blue color as it’s the Autism Speaks organization theme color. They have been doing a so-called “Light it Up Blue” campaign that calls for people to spread awareness about Autism by wearing blue. Therefore, every year on the 2nd of April, we see a lot of blue-themed campaigns, promotional materials, events, fundraisers, and other means of support for the organization. 

While you can always engage the kids in additional Autism Awareness Day activities, this is a nice way of starting the conversation (“Why do you think we all wear blue today?”) and honoring the day without any effort, resources, or expenses. 

Interactive World Autism Awareness Day Worksheets

Another thing you can do is teach kids about Autism Awareness Day in a fun and non-intimidating way. For some, it may be scary to learn about the medical aspects of autism, even when reading about the behavioral symptoms. This is why it’s always a smart idea to incorporate stimulating and playful, yet educational materials in the lecture. 

On our website, we have a 19-page worksheet pack about World Autism Awareness Day that incorporates a lot of kid-friendly facts and printables you can utilize in the classroom or home environment. With this bundle, kids will have the opportunity to learn about the common misconceptions, current findings, and symbolism of autism. Kids can also make a flyer for the cause, and play guessing games that aid their understanding of the condition. 

Get Familiar and Play With Sensory Tools for Autism

Children with autism are a lot more sensitive and responsive to sensory stimuli. This is why it’s very common for them to get upset or excited over particular sounds, aromas, colors, movements, or other stimuli in the environment that other kids ignore. Having this in mind, experts have designed specific toys that work well for kids with autism by stimulating their five senses. 

Some of the most popular sensory toys for autism include sensory mats, chewing toys, slimes or other fidget toys,  vibrating cushions, and many more. 

If other kids also use these toys and consider them a normal extension to their typical toy collection, children with autism would feel much more accepted and like part of the group. 

Take Part in a Fundraising Activity for Autism (ex. Walk for Autism)

On the 2nd of April, but also a few weeks before and after the date, a lot of organizations and charities organize fundraisers for autism awareness and children’s needs. Together with your kids or students, you too can take action and contribute to these initiatives. Not only will kids learn more about the condition and show support, but they’ll learn about the value of taking action. 

A great example of an Autism Awareness Day activity is the Walk for Autism fundraiser. This year the event is online, which means you can walk anywhere, at any time, in any place. So, what’s the point? The challenge is for you to walk 10,000 steps a day for 8 days. Go to their website and see how to take part in the challenge step-by-step. However, don’t forget that this is just one example and we’re sure that you can find many other events locally or globally that you and your students can support. 

Learn Through Books About Autism

Young children might actually hear about autism for the first time. Not only that, but they might not even understand the basic medical terminology needed for understanding healthy, typical, optimal, unhealthy, untypical, or simply different development. Which is expected, considering how many adults still have trouble differentiating between all these words. Therefore, the best way to introduce a new concept and avoid misconceptions is to utilize the help of some amazingly written children’s books about autism. Here are our favorites!

• All Cats Have Asperger Syndrome by Kathy Hoopmann (ages: 7+)
• All My Stripes: A Story for Children with Autism by Shaina Rudolph and Danielle Royer (ages: 5-8)
• The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism by Naoki Higashida (ages: 10+)
• Ian’s Walk: A Story about Autism by Laurie Lears (ages: 4-8)
• My Brother Charlie by Holly Robinson Peete (ages: 6-10)
• Andy and His Yellow Frisbee by Mary Thompson (ages: 5-8)
• The Autism Acceptance Book by Ellen Sabin (ages: 6+)
• We’re Amazing, 1, 2, 3! A story about friendship and autism by Leslie Kimmelman ()
• The Asperkid’s (Secret) Book of Social Rules: The Handbook of Not-so-Obvious Social Guidelines for Tweens and Teens with Asperger Syndrome by Jennifer Cook O’Toole (ages: 10-17)
• The Asperger Children’s Toolkit by Francis Musgrave (ages: 4-8)
• The Girl Who Thought In Pictures: The Story of Dr. Temple Grandin by Julia Finley Mosca 

Organize a No-Bullying Campaign

If you’re teaching kids in middle school or older, then you can assign a group work of organizing an anti-bullying campaign for kids with autism. That would be an amazing opportunity for kids to learn how to stand up for others and raise their voices for those who need it. To help kids in their mission, hold a lecture or post a guide on how to organize an anti-bullying campaign. 

Here are some tips! 

First, the process of organizing campaigns follows a specific process broken down into several steps. These steps include choosing the campaign focus, doing research about the topic, choosing a leader (someone to present), deciding about the goals that the campaign aims to achieve and the actions leading to those goals. Finally, setting up a time and date for the execution. 

Of course, kids will need your guidance for many of these steps, so be there for them. Make sure to provide resources through which kids can get relevant and authentic information about the condition. Also, give kids ideas on how to gather more specific information, like doing interviews with some of the school staff or doing a survey for the children in the school, and more. Finally, be there to guide them in setting up realistic and achievable goals. 

Kids can be idealistic, which can lead to disappointment if they don’t achieve their goals. With your help, however, they can easily raise some money for buying appropriate educational resources for students with autism. Additionally, they can gather info about what other students know or think about autism and present those findings to the school staff with the aim of raising awareness. Depending on the challenges in your particular school, you can help kids make a meaningful campaign. 

Before You Leave

We would’ve loved to talk more about autism in general, share helpful tips, and maybe debunk some of the annoying myths circulating around, but we promise we’ll do this in a separate article very soon! So, make sure to follow us! 

In the meantime, check out our article on how to Teach Math to Students with Autism, which is a must-read for all teachers and homeschooling parents who work with children with autism.

As additional support, we aim to provide high-quality, affordable teaching worksheets to all teachers and parents all around the world. With just one click, you can find and download a ready-to-use pack of resources from our growing library on our main website!

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