Presentation Overview

Understanding How Play Skills Emerge: Practical Strategies to Choose Developmentally Appropriate Materials

Although play is often considered to be ubiquitous within early childhood, play is a set of skills that emerge in a developmental sequence for infants and young children. For many young autistic children who experience differences or delays in the development of play skills, identifying children’s current play level and matching materials to meet their current strengths and needs can support their learning. Given that toys and common household objects are frequently used in the context of Naturalistic Developmental Behavioral Intervention practices and programs, understanding how to match these materials to children’s individual developmental play level is critical to support their engagement in meaningful learning opportunities. In this session, we will explore 16 developmental levels of play, how to match material selection and actions on objects to these levels, and why attention to play development is important across intervention practices.

Learning Objectives

What you'll learn...after completing this presentation, participants will be able to

  • Understand the play is a series of skills that emerge in early childhood.

  • Identify four broad levels of play (simple, combination, presymbolic, symbolic) and name 2-3 play actions that fit each of these play levels.

  • Identify a developmentally appropriate target play level based on a child’s mastered play level and choose three play materials that match the target play level

Continuing Education

The NDBI Navigator is an approved continuing education provider for the BACB, QABA, and IBAO.

Professionals from other disciplines will receive a professional development certificate, which they can submit to their respective licensing boards for consideration.

Your Presenter

Stephanie Shire, PhD

Stephanie Shire is an Associate Professor in Special Education and Clinical Sciences in the College of Education at the University of Oregon. Her research interests focus on the development, adaptation, efficacy, and real-world effectiveness of intervention programs for children with autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders. She conducts this work through productive community partnerships in both low- and high-resource settings. Her work focuses on the application of rigorous randomized controlled trial designs to examine both the implementation and effectiveness of interventions to maximize children’s communicative and developmental outcomes.

Presentation Content

  1. 1

    • About the Presentation

    • Meet Stephanie Shire

    • Professional Practice Reminder

    • Video: Understanding How Play Skills Emerge: Practical Strategies to Choose Developmentally Appropriate Materials

    • Quiz

    • Survey