Cresanna Kahrl, BCBA, LBA

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United States
Knoxville, TN
Cresanna Kahrl, BCBA, LBA

Board Certified Behavior Analyst
Case consultation, Clinical mentoring, Autism therapy, Parent coaching, AAC support

07/21/2025

🔎 Assessing Play Skills 🔎

In symbolic play, children begin using imagination to transform objects and take on pretend roles.

Ready to get started with play assessment? I've created a free printable tool just for you!

Comment CHECKLIST to get your copy!

07/14/2025

🔎 Assessing Play Skills 🔎

This stage is all about simple pretend actions—feeding a doll, brushing a toy dog, trying on pretend jewelry.

Looking for ideas? Comment PRETEND and I’ll send you my list of 35 targets for pre-symbolic play!

07/07/2025

🔎 Assessing Play Skills 🔎

Combinatorial play is the next step after exploration—and it's full of possibilities!

Need a quick guide? Comment BUILD and I’ll send you 40 combinatorial play ideas you can use right away.

06/30/2025

🔎 Assessing Play Skills 🔎

Let's talk about how to assess early play skills and find the right starting point for your learner!

Struggling to think of play targets for early learners? I’ve got you—comment TARGETS and I’ll share my 24 go-to ideas to get you started!

06/16/2025

🌟 Symbolic ("imaginary") play typically emerges between 18 and 36 months 🌟

This is often the most challenging stage of play development for children with autism. In upcoming posts, we'll consider how to assess play development, ideas for play activities to support development at each stage, and special considerations for older learners who may have missed these skills.

06/09/2025

🌟 Play starts to look familiar 🌟

In Stage 3, children begin acting out routines they see every day—first to themselves, then with dolls or figures.

06/03/2025

🌟 Play gets purposeful. 🌟

In Stage 2, children begin combining, stacking, and arranging toys in new ways. They learn about how objects work together and begin to show awareness of how they are used in the real world.

05/27/2025

🌟 Play starts with exploration! 🌟

In Stage 1, children use their senses and simple actions to interact with toys. But sometimes learners get "stuck" at mouthing, banging, or throwing objects instead of developing more advanced play skills.

Need ideas for discriminated play actions and take-apart targets for these learners? Comment "targets" below and I'll send you a list of 24 play ideas to get you started!

(and these aren't just for 2 year olds!)

05/20/2025

🧩 Play develops step by step—and each stage builds the foundation for the next. Today, we’re taking a big-picture look at the 4 stages of play development. We’ll dive into each one in more detail soon, so follow to stay updated!

05/12/2025

🌟 Is play really important? Should I spend valuable treatment time teaching play skills?

From stacking blocks to pretend tea parties, play is a behavioral cusp that supports the development of communication, social skills, and so much more.

In this series, we’ll explore how early object play develops and how to teach this critical developmental skill.

Join us as we explore the building blocks of play!

04/28/2025

🌟 Coming Soon!! 🌟

I've been diving into the research on the most effective interventions for teaching early toy play skills! I'm excited to share with you what I've learned, coming soon in a new series!

04/08/2025

I'm looking for a few BAs to test and provide feedback on a custom GPT I've created to assist with goal writing.

If you have the GPT Plus subscription and would like to test it out, please send me a message for the link. For now, I'm limiting it to 10 testers so I can get feedback to improve the model.

Address

Knoxville, TN
37922

Website

http://linktr.ee/Cresanna

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