Today I’m sharing how I made a wall-mounted Autism friendly visual timetable. If you read my blog often, you’ll know my son is Classically Autistic. He’s 11 now, but still mostly nonverbal. He understands a lot of what I say, and he uses an iPad app called LAMP to communicate a little, but my son mostly leads me to what he needs. This is ok, until he can’t lead me to what he wants.
Why Use An Autism Friendly Visual Timetable?
His primary school used something called a now and next board, which helped a lot, but Sam still got frustrated when he couldn’t see the activity he was thinking about on the board. This lead me to look for a weekly visual timetable. Twinkl had loads of pecs symbols and visual timetables, but none were quite what I wanted, so I got to work creating my own.
Planning Our Week-View Autism Friendly Visual Timetable
I wanted a visual timetable that would be large enough for Sam to see exactly what was happening, and planned to put it on the hallway wall. Rather than settling for paper, I bought a cheap A3 whiteboard from Wilko. With a permanent marker, I drew lines to add the days of the week across the top, and space for 4 activities each day.
I decided to use permanent marker so my son couldn’t rub out the lines or days, like he could have with a whiteboard marker. Next, I added 4 velcro dots to each day of the week, so I could swap out the activities easily.
Make sure you stick to using either the hook side or the fluffy side of the dots on the board, and the opposite one on the symbols, so they can be swapped around easily. I chose to use the fluffy side on the board. Once they were on, the Autism friendly visual timetable board itself was pretty much done – it was time to start the hard work, and create the symbols…
Creating the Autism Friendly Visual Timetable Symbols
My son has profound learning disabilities, so using words alone isn’t an option for us, so I settled on a mixture of photos for specific people and places, and PECS style symbols for everything else. PECS symbols are simple graphics which show an object or activity. I used Twinkl for most of these as well – their 7 day free trial really came in handy!
Our Visual Timetable board ended up with a 5cm column for each day, so I made the symbols 4cm x 4cm, so that once I’d laminated them, they fit within the limes. I then got to work with my paper cutter and laminator, creating Autism friendly visual timetable symbols for the board.
Actually getting the symbols to be the same size was hard work. In the end, I created a photoshop template and put my images into that, so I could resize them on-screen. If you have access to photoshop and want to use my template, you can find it here.
If you don’t have photoshop, you can use this Blank PECS PDF File I made as a rough guide to put your images inside, and add your chosen text to the blank space.
I played around with paper and found that this 160GSM white card and these 250 Micron laminating pouches worked really well together. I already had my Laminator Machine and Paper Cutter, and they definitely made the job easier.
Sticking on the Velcro
I bought some Velcro Dots from Amazon, so that I could swap and change the symbols each week. As I mentioned earlier, I put the fluffy side of the velcro dots on the board. This meant I had to stick a hook-sided dot to each symbol.
I found the best way to do this was to attach the velcro dots together (stuck to the board), remove the backing from the hook side, and place the symbol over the dot. This method meant wach dot was centralised on the symbol, so they weren’t veering over the line into the wrong day.
I left the board out of the way for 48 hours so the dots could really grip, before hanging it at the bottom of the stairs.
My son loves to be able to see what he’s doing each day, and now part of our morning routine is for me to point to the day and say, “Today is [insert day], today you’ll be [insert each activity]. Hearing ehat’s happening helps keep sam calm, and he definitely asks far less for activities that he knows happen on a particular day of the week.
Now, Next and Then Board
The week-view Autism Friendly Visual Timetable worked so well, I made Sam a portable Now, Next and Then board, using the same idea. I wrote all of the permanent words and lines with permanent marker, and attached a whiteboard pen to add the time when needed. This one can be carried around with us, and is useful if we go out for the day.
I hope this post has been helpful for you, if you’re trying to create a visual timetable. Let me know in the comments if there are any specific symbols you need but are struggling to find.
