Lesson plan - Family and Friends

This lesson plan is designed to help children understand family relationships and friendships, including identifying family members, understanding friendship dynamics, and learning appropriate social boundaries.

Lesson plan - Family and Friends

Family and Friends Lesson Plans

As children grow up they usually gravitate towards other children of similar age and these bonds become stronger around teenage. This is a well researched aspect of human development and it satisfies many of the secondary needs for a person like the need to belong, how well regarded a person is, builds their self esteem and confidence and aids further potential.

When children are on the autism spectrum, we see that the younger children engage in parallel play. Their atypical communication is interpreted as indifference and not having connections. They may not have access to vocabulary and some of the ideas,aspects and layers of relationships. That could lead to certain socially inappropriate behaviors which alienate them further and cause distress to the autistic person as well as the people around. Learning to raise boundaries is important to have good relationships as well as self preservation. Therefore, this lesson becomes an essential element in emotional education.

This set of lesson plans may be appropriate for children 6 years and above.

The following learning outcomes are addressed:

Booklet 1:

  • To identify family members, understand their roles and what we call them
  • Discriminate between family and non family members.

Booklet 2: Revisit strangers and known people

Booklet 3:

  • To understand the word ‘friendship’ and identify ‘friends' from 'known people’
  • Discriminate between friends and family, understand why some are friends
  • Discriminate between friends and ‘known people’ and strangers

Booklet 4: To identify all the things we do with friends

Booklet 5: How to follow boundaries with friends and why

Booklet 6: How to manage ourselves when we do not like some people

Booklet 7: How to manage ourselves when we like some people, extend to how to be friends with anyone.

Each booklet has the following:

  • Stated objectives
  • Things to collect and keep ready
  • List activities to be conducted and how they should be done
  • Worksheets supporting these activities and discussion points for worksheets
  • Answer key
  • Some of the booklets have social stories and role play script enclosed.

Contents