Toy Trends for Children with Special Needs
Here are four trends that offer expanded play opportunities for kids with disabilities:
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Use of technology and interactivity. New printing technology has made it easy and affordable to customize some games for children with special needs. Goosie Cards® are relatively new and a good example. They are flash cards that consumers make by uploading personal pictures and text to their website. The company creates the cards and send them back to you. Parents and families can use these cards to customize what their child needs to learn, and they can also involve the child in the creative process. The concepts you can teach are endless, from math to spelling to social-emotional skills.
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Promote movement. There is a powerful trend to promote physical play activities, which is welcome because children with special needs carry an even higher risk factor for obesity than typically developing kids and so many children are drawn into non-active play experiences on computers. Current research is showing that physical activity can help increase memory, perception, language, attention, emotional stability, and even decision-making. Another plus is that movement has been shown to help cam and promote alertness in infants.
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Deliver developmental benefits. Toys and play products are now delivering, at record levels, real developmental benefits: cognitive, physical, and or social. Inventors, educators, and engineers continue to amaze consumers with the creative ways they can structure toys and games to help children learn and grow.
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Bridge therapy and play. Toy creators are bridging the gap between therapy and play, and professionals are realizing there are toys out there that offer therapeutic goals quietly imbedded in the play processes they promote. Ther-A-Saurs, for example, are squishy toy dinosaurs in graduated resistance levels. Dinosaurs play a large role in pretend play, but when kids play with these dinosaurs, they are also developing hand and arm strength and practicing grasp and release. Wikki Stix is another product that helps with manual dexterity and eye-hand coordination. They can form shapes, names, numbers, or letters and make all these developmental milestones fun and entertaining for children, in addition to feeding their creative spirit.
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