Childhood Case

The play activity was designed to observe mathematical as well as learning patterns in children with autism. The best possible method to conduct research on children is to observe and watch children in their natural environment. It is even more difficult to research on the children with the autism or any other learning disabilities without altering their behaviour. The active involvement of experimenter with children can deeply affect the results of the experiment. Catriona and colleagues reports "The stress of parents may contribute to the maintenance or escalation of the child's behaviour problems" (Geroge, 2011). Similarly, the stress of the experimenter can directly elevate the aggression of the child whereas the responsive nature of the experimenter can help in motivation a child to respond in a specific way. The child management programs teaches to "Model and reinforce positive, prosocial behaviours of children, primarily through praise and rewards, and to ignore inappropriate behaviours" (Geroge, 2011). The main concern was to maintain the positive interactions with the children in the autism society. Besides active involvement and positive interactions, it was thought that children are naturally attracted towards activities that trigger them mentally and physically. Kristin and Dante say that "Play is an essential activity of early childhood as it contributes to the cognitive, social, emotional, and motivational development of children" (Kristin Valentino, 2011).

On the play-project activity day, a 5 block games was introduced to the children of the Autism Society it was specifically designed for the children with the developmental difficulties, to help them develop some of the basic learning skills. The little help in learning skills helps a lot in the development of such children. It is stated that "Within the context of play children learn, develop, and practice innovative behaviours and social competencies" (Kristin Valentino, 2011). As the brain activity is very slow and not dysfunctional it make even harder to make them do simple tasks that normal would have been done so easily. The active engagement is very hard to maintain with the children of mental problems because they often loose concentration++++. The toy was designed specifically for the preschoolers. "Pretend play is important because pretense strengthens a wide variety of mental abilities including attention, memory, language, creativity, perspective-taking, and self control" (Kristin Valentino, 2011).In this activity children were expected to arrange wooden blocks to make thing according to their interest. The toy was made up of five, 1 inch cubes made of wood. The wood was used to symbolise that simple and homemade stuff thing+++. The idea was to make the use all the 6 sides of these cubes but to avoid the complexity and by keeping in mind the brain functionality of preschooler , only four sides were used. The one side contained all the numerical from 1 to 5. To observe the mathematical skills of the childrens, the opposite side has alphabets from A to E. It was to observe the language and symbol recognising skills. The other side contain the favourite charaters