Art therapy on the spectrum

You can achieve a little bit of art therapy in your home for you or your child that might be on the spectrum. All you need are a few art therapy prompts and ideas to get you started.

Therapeutic art activities are particularly good for people with Autism because it allows them to use their already visually-minded brains to communicate through artistic media. Verbal communication might be limited and so recording visual images that represent emotions help people with autism process their memories, thoughts and feelings.

In this blog article, we are going to make a gratitude wreath. This is perfect for you if you would like to gain an awareness of things that we can be grateful for during the holiday season.

If you have access to a local florist, vineyard, or garden with plants that sit on vines. We are going to grab them whilst they are still green and twist them around each other. We are going to secure them in sections with some twine, tying them off along the wreath. Then we are going to make a loop and secure it again, with some twine - making a full circle.

Next, using the template provided below, print and cut out the love hearts. These are downloadable and can be adjusted to print in any size. Decorate your love hearts with all sorts of colours, mediums and textures. Go crazy! This is the time to unleash the creative within you!

On the back side, write down one thing that you are grateful for. Some ideas might be:

• I am grateful for my pets

• I am grateful for my family

• I am grateful for my home

• I am grateful for my ability to see the positive in everything

• I am grateful for the weather today

• I am grateful for my resilience

• I am grateful for my hobbies that bring me joy

• I am grateful for my friendships

Anything that brings you joy!

Next, I like to put a patch of clear sticky tap eon either side of the centre of the love heart. This is going to strengthen your paper for the next step. Now you are going to use a holepunch to put a hole over the sticky tape. Weave some twine through the hole and loop in through one of the vines on the wreath. The good thing about this activity, is you can make it a regular thing until the wreath is full of all these love hearts filled with gratitude.

Gratitude Wreath Template

It's an easy activity to do, it's cost effective and if you do it as an ongoing project over a period of time, it will gradually start to reinforce positive thinking behaviours to elevate self esteem and create mindfulness in our life.

Happy creating! If you want some fun and easy art therapy activities for yourself or your child, check out this link below to look at our monthly art therapy box subscriptions.

https://arttherapybox.subscribemenow.com/offer_page.html