Visual figure-ground activities help children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) distinguish objects from busy backgrounds, improving focus, reading, and daily tasks. These are particularly useful as many kids with ASD face visual processing challenges.
## Key Benefits
Figure-ground perception aids attention in cluttered settings, like finding items in a bag or spotting details on worksheets. It supports literacy, math, and organization by filtering distractions. Children with ASD often struggle with tasks like copying from a board or puzzles due to weak figure-ground skills.
## Home Activities
- Play "I Spy" to locate objects by color or shape in a room, starting simple and adding complexity.
- Sort laundry for matching socks or find specific clothes in a pile.
- Hide toys in a tray of rice-beans for digging and spotting.
## Classroom or Therapy Games
- Use hidden picture books like "Where's Waldo" or "I Spy, " circling finds with dry-erase markers on protected sheets.
- Do scavenger hunts or spot-it card games with limited items first.
- Try mazes, dot-to-dots, or word searches from activity books.
## Hands-On Crafts
- Paint-by-number or color overlapping shapes differently.
- Complete jigsaw puzzles, starting with large pieces.
- Trace shapes or find hidden objects in busy drawings.
