Toys on a Budget for Christmas Part 1

I thought it would be good to put a small list of toys that are really educational for children with special needs or not in a budget. In general toys have a tendency to be expensive but if we can find educational toys on a budget that means you can buy even more to help your children.


Blocks are great I'm finally getting started to buy some blocks but they can be kind of expensive, I think megabloks are great because they are not too smallgreat for motor skills and exercising imagination.



I think this 2 are great to get started and specially if the sets have cars and people or animals that get's the set a little more interesting. And I think they have great prices.

Magnetic sets and books are great to get the conversation and speech going plus working on learning some concepts of real life as farm animal in their environment.

These sets are great price also



These are great and both under $10 these so much speech you can try to work on these sets.

The next ones are great for match and fine motor skills plus to work on taking turns and play together with other people. I love these a more detail review soon both also under $10

This one is great for Fine Motor skills as kids have to use their pointers.

Music nothing is best to make children learn and specially if you pair music with books on tapes: books with holes. I've learned from my son's teacher, he is loving it and they make the reading so much more fun and for Autistic kids is the only thing that catches their attention.



And they are under $6.00 and you can buy even used cheaper on Amazon.

I'm a huge fan of sticker pads they can teach fine motor skills, speech taking turns so much ! And they are about $6.00 with endless activities and they are reusable.



Love the make a face ones they are great to teach parts of the face and talk about facial expressions.

I'll come back with some more in another post as well some things for parents.
Jana

Take the Cake Review

I always saw this toy around and the price was so good that I finally decided to buy. I'm on the quest to bump it up the play toys we are starting the process of setting up a independent activity schedule for Lucas here at home with the help of his teacher. I will talk more about it but that is for him to learn to play independently but I want to see if I can make him to play more with me so we can improve his social and play skills. It's hard for him and with any Autistic child because they are so self centered and really like to be in their own world and have such low play skill levels.

Anyway, it's hard to find toys that will teach him and to have some fun, but this little toy is different because the little pieces are wood which makes them like 3D and the pieces comes in this little shaker which also makes fun to ask them to shake. It's great that we can make the boring matching game into a more active game.

We can work matching skills, fine motor skills and language skills.

Asking the shape colors, ask to find the shapes, asking to shake the cupcake, and taking turns.

Fine motor skills you can ask to pick up the shapes the right way and later cleaning on with the pincher grasp and so on.

A great toy to invest on...

Jana

Printable Activities at Home

 I'm back after vacation time and have some time to post again, now that the boy is at school I thought would be nice to talk about activities to do at home so they don't forget their skills or maybe get new ones. Printables are a cheap way and I think adds a lot of diversity.
On Etsy you can find a lot of printable activities  but of course you choose ones adequate to your child's level.
I found these ones at Abbiesolutely Preschool Printable.
Another advantage is because they are printable they are so affordable. Although to use them after printing it is better to laminate I have a laminator but if you don't just 2 or 3 pages don't add that much to pay at the office store.

The first one of fruits is not just good to work as puzzle and shape recognition but also you can work on speech asking them to grab the fruit.
Let's put the banana..where is banana ? can you say ba na na !

The other one works with matching letters which is fun, also if you print double the letters you can create  words (if your child is older). I think for little boys like mine that are obsessed with trains is a good choice.

I will probably do a podcast soon talking more about this topic.

Jana

Trying to Find Exciting Toys Post EI era

Recently I'm changing all my son's toys and re thinking and re planning what will work for us in the post Early Intervention phase. I' ve been noticing that many toys we used are just not tolerable for him. At least to work with me he has been showing some resistance which I think it's normal, some things just reminds him of the "work" we used to do.

The relationship now has to change between me and him and toys and he and his father. We have to try to be more sneaky still teaching him but trying to find now things that goes with the flow and things
we can play together and we can teach him that it's fun to play but not forcing him to say words or that kind of pressure.

Autistic kids have a hard time enjoying toys, that's a fact. I've heard parents that said well my kid never liked toys so he had a computer since young and things like that. Well yes these gadgets are more interesting for them but will I give up on him learning how to play with toys: NO.
I think this is some us as parents of Autistic children have to continue to try, even though the hunt is so hard, money spent many times in things we think they will enjoy and they don't like it at all, but it's part of the process.

But why we should keep trying?!

• Because is a form of engagement and socialization with them. 
• It teaches them to socialize and rules of social interactions.
• It teaches taking turns
• It teaches  Speech
• Overall shows them to have fun !! Toys are fun!!

Anyway, then it came the Hex bugs I came across them searching on Amazon. And got this:

This is the travel set which is supper convenient because it folds and I have even taken this to friends house. But it just comes with 1 bug and I got some more they are so inexpensive I buy on Amazon because Targets always  they are sold out.

The nice thing also you can attach other hex bugs hives in this one. Like this is on my wish list:




He loves spirals and to see this bugs go around will be very fun .
At first I thought he was going to be scared but now he actually likes to grab and put them in certain places and going down the little slide. What are things they can help?

• Eye coordination
• Sensory issues because the bugs vibrate
• Speech: bugs, go, your turn, my turn, say the colors of the bugs  yellow bug, black bug, go down, turning, go fast, go up and so on.
• Fine motor skills

Another one that seems fun is this one:

Does he play for a long time? Of course not but the point is no matter how long he plays he is engaged.

Jana

Sorting Toys

I love sorting, I think it teaches so much for the kids, and there is great options out there. But you have really to take advantage so the toy can last and teach many kinds of sorting. Because many times the toys pretty much just sort colors, but we want much more than that. Also sorting board games can be great activities for speech, because as you sort by repeating the words we make children learn the words and try to speak them.
This particular one in the picture I love it because right now we use for basic things, but later with the boards that comes with we can do more advanced sorting and that's help how even a toy maybe you can think your kid is too old  for it can really work in your advantage.
This one is the Farm sorting center. And is just cure to have this animals, they also come in different sizes so we wil work later on big and small.
They also have the Vehicle sorting center which seems to be fun for later on.

Also I found some good alternatives




The super sorting pie we have as well, and it' s so good at first we started with colors, but now we are going to shares and also starting to practice fine motor skills asking him to pick up the fruits with the holders. It's a excellent toy that will last a lot. Also you can use sorting toys to work with math.

Here is a article on benefits of sorting.

The Challenge Floor Puzzles

Floor puzzles was introduced to me by one of our formers EI therapist.  At first I thought that would be too challenging for him and that he would not be able to do. But again is all about seen the toy with other eyes. He doesn't do what we suppose to do right now but he will but while this we work with collaboration, waiting, sharing, turn taking. All this you can accomplish with floor puzzles.

With him is all about patience and collaboration we don't want them to do the puzzle by themselves because of course they can't but it's about asking for help, waiting ..

So at first he cried a lot I think was frustrating for him, he knows is something harder than what he is used to. But we encourage him to help us, basically we doing the puzzle and he just kind of helping pressing down the pieces. 

For Speech we can say things like my turn, help me, we are almost done, your turn.

Of course here you can see we used Thomas because always is a extra encouragement. With time using the puzzle again we notice a decrease in the complaining and the crying. But you have to keep it up so they don't loose that skill. And it's great to improve memorization.

Here are some ideas:

This one is great quality and so many opportunities I actually bought to give his Speech Therapist so she could use not just with him there but with other kids, she loved it !

This is the one we have from Thomas

This is another great one for the alphabets with Thomas

And here some other ones that are on my wish list:

thanks

Handmade Fine Motor and Attention toy

Here is a simple way to exercise fine motor skills with things that you have at home, I got great tips on Laura's tip of the week. I washed a cashew bucket from target and got some straws there on the craft section .
This activity gave Lucas also a opportunity to practice concentration I never thought he would enjoy so much and stay for such a long time, he loves so much he wants to grab all the sticks out for a second and third time.

A activity that I use as well for speech is asking him to clean up and teaching him to open the jar. Sometimes counting as we clean and teaching turn.
I say : my turn to clean - I put in
I say your turn or Lucas' turn

So cheap and help the kids so much.

The fear of hair cut

Well some kids but specially  kids with sensory issues have a hard time cutting the hair.
I can just speak for my son, I think when we try to use the machine (which we stopped) literary freaks him out. Then what happens is his hair cut gets even worse because he moves and fights and scream so much.
It  would be a dream to take him to a salon and have someone do the job: yes but this is not our reality so
the way I do now is what is giving me the most success.

First I went and got things that would really distract him in the bath tub, things that he is really into right now in his case Thomas of course and abcs and pots to transfer water and bubble bath and thicker soaps.(the ones like shaving cream)





This Thomas boat is really cute and really got him distracted





What I do than is get my scissors and cut little by little each day some days he lets me cut more some days less i do it real fast and he gets annoyed I play more and cut more, I get the chunks on my hand and put in the trash so not all goes to the bath tube.
So far has been working and the important thing here is the association with cutting with good things, the problem I think in insisting on cutting when the child is screaming is that he or she associates with something bad. And we don't want that.
Another ideas of things that helps and which also you can work with speech while giving a bath.




Hope that helps
Jana

Learning with Cupcake trays

Here is another simple idea that should not cost you a lot of money, it was brought my Lucas' DI I thought was a good one and at the end if they eat it they have rewards, you can use the colored cheerios like fruit da loops and make color sorting, cut labels for the end of the pin. And do sorting.

How could we step it up if you child already know colors sorting:


- Use this same thing to learn numbers instead of colored backgrounds make it numbers or just ask the child to put one, two and so on.

- Use if for patterning, create a sequence of 3  in the top and ask them to repeat in the bottom.

- Buy other small objects like small tiny cars, animals and so sorting by shapes.

- Work the sensory use dry pasta, beans any that your child has a sensory issue.


Possibilities are endless !

Have fun !

Learning the Cheap Way

This is a great idea and so cheap for a seasonal activity, one of Lucas DI' s (Development Interventionist) brought this and it was so cute. Dollar Store tags buy couple of each and laminate them I have a laminator it was a good investment that I got a long time ago to laminate some pictures. She just laminated the tags in a blank paper than the tags by themselves.Voila you have a matching game.

He is doing excellent now with matching I can see that he develop this skill really well now, in the beginning it was not so easy now it's beautiful to see how he scans the paper and find matches. The same with wood puzzles.
Matching is good for the brain, develop pre requisite for reading and math. Also we work with speech in this game as we can work with any game.
Say the name of characters if the kid is older like Lucas and have speech problems it's important to try to make the child say before giving the tag, if the child is younger you just model saying the name.


I hope you have a great 2012.
Jana

Pretend Ideas

I think to see the real potential of pretend toys is hard, specially if you're dealing with kids that struggle with pretending, but that has been a constant thing on my mind. Lucas struggles a lot with pretending it's something hard to grasp with Autism, but it's a very important skill to any kid. Here is a good article pointing out the importance of pretend play. HERE.
But I think some parents take for granted that some kids know how to pretend play or play by themselves and just think have a room full of toys and let the kids play alone will benefit them and they don't need to pretend play. It's important for them to play alone? Yes I believe  that the real benefits of pretend play and the lessons you want them to learn will come through of you or any one sitting down and playing with them.

So a recently  a former therapist brought this toy and Lucas did so well that I thought would be a good addition to his food play which he loves although he get's repetitive with the corn and the knife but that it's typical distraction.

But he loves this tea pot.




What I love about this set, even though I don't like noise toys this is the right noise in the right time. It makes this noise when you tilt the pot that the water is flowing in the cup. Which it made total sense to Lucas and It makes me so happy that we say : Can you put more tea? and he grabs the tea pot and tilt in the cup. Yes he gets distracted wanting to hear noise all the time or open the tea pot. But that is part of it, what matters is he knowing and learning we are together drinking tea, he has to serve tea for the baby toy, to me and the therapist.

Target words

Tea, pour, more tea, cakes, give me cake, yummy, please , thank you




Jana