Five year olds, special ed or not, do not have long attention spans. If we are talking about a formal class where the kids are expected to do a specific activity and follow directions then half an hour is about the limit and may be too much for kids who are easily overstimulated or have tactile sensory issues. On the other hand, these kids often benefit from being able to use and explore various media and create on their own so if the class allows some time for that it might be a little longer. Just make sure that there are enough adults in the room to supervise and deal with problems and remove the child who may be frightened or upset.

In my experience, and this might sound funny to you but i have always let the child chose how long his art time is and other activities. Only because they have very short attention spans and can not sit for long eriods if the subject does not click with them. Autistisc children are really great to be around and are so loving and can fly off the handle in an instant, but they will have their fit and come right back to the project if you are persistant in calling them back.. I had to encourage my kids by giving them about 2 minutes to wonder off and then i would go to them take their hand and say they need to finish after a while they were able to sit for longer periods. Autistic kids needs one on one esspecially with MR, but 30 minutes is suffecient.

I would worry about it not being long enough, lol! Any 5 year olds, MR/Autistic or not could probably spend the better part of a day doing arts and crafts.

I taught a sign language class for kids over the summer and had several autistic kids, and everyday we did a different craft. It seemed to hold their attention for about a half hour before they were ready to move on, but usually we sat in the class and learned new signs (30-45mins) , went to the art table to do a craft (15-30min), cleaned up and had a snack (15-20mins), went back to the art stuff b/c we usually had to wait for something to dry before adding the finishing touches (15-20mins), then back to learning new signs (15mins), then played games that used the signs (usually 2 or 3 games for about 15 mins each game).

The trick to me was to keep constantly changing the activity (we tried not to stay on any one thing for more than 30 mins). It worked for most of the kids, but we did have one boy that was autistic, ocd and had a hearing impairment and because of the ocd, it was hard to get him to leave the art table for snack, and just come back to it. But the rest of the kids seemed to do well with the cycle. Even though we kept things constantly changing, we kept the cycle the same everyday. Even though many of the kids were too young to read a clock, after about 25 mins of teaching, I had to be careful not to say “Any questions?” because it would immediately trigger “Its art time, right?”

Keep things constantly moving and you shouldnt have too much of a problem;) How ever much time you take make sure you have enough to do for that time period. You have to be able to make allowances for the kids that breeze through theings and for the ones that take forever to finish.

I myself am an individual with Autism (I am high functioning as you can tell), and I know that I certainly loved Art when I was in School.

Well the only time I didn’t wanna go to Art though was in 4th grade when this one really bossy teacher was teaching Art (this same lady was on City Council around that time).

I did not have Art in 5th or 7th grade, but in 6th grade I had Art till arrangements were made to have me in the Regular School in the morning and Special Ed School in the afternoon.

The art teacher I did have in 6th grade was willing to stick up for special ed students, like I remember when a friend of mine who was in Special Ed was being hassled by another student, my Friend told the teacher what happened and she said the 1st name of the student doing the hassling.

Ok well I am describing some things but I guess how long an Art class should be for a special education student really depends on things like the person’s abilities.

Based on my own experience, I honestly am not sure if any Special Ed Students who were in the same class as me, did in fact have a higher IQ level than myself, although I do recall some who like myself were at least in the intellegence range of IQ level.

But I did notice those who did have lower IQ levels than me as well, and like I remember for instance in 1996 when I was working a Summer Job in a Disabled Job program, me and another student were the only Disabled workers that were High Functioning but the other 3 were at a lower functioning level.

And I remember the Supervisor (who was from the program) had a certain day that she had to cancel for an appointment (but we were still gonna be paid for that day anyways considering it was not our fault that we couldn’t work that day), and I remember she directly told me and other high functioning worker (who had ADHD) about what was up and for us to tell our Parents, but the other 3 she was gonna send a note to their Parents.

And I remember yeah it was because me and this one other guy were gonna understand the situation better that she could just tell us directly.