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

Trying to set up routine at home

My constant struggle of balance at home is not making my son think that he is in school but at the same time not just letting him be with his favorites electronics  all the time, they are great and help but he get's too focused on his own world. Now that the storm has passed and we have power again I will start showing what I'm trying to do at home to create a balance so he keeps working and learning and we creating that independency that we want.

We are  going to start a Independent Activity Schedule, more pretend activities, direct lead activities with music and scarves or bean bags, music and imitation.

I believe our kids don't need a miracle pill but they do need a lot of work so they can learn to interact with us and the world around them. Ipad and Iphone are great but they don't interact with the world a whole lot while playing with those.

More to come.

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

Learning to Grieve Pre made Definitions about our Children

Many people and even other mother's don't understand when I say to them  I had to grieve my child when I received the diagnose of Autism. I've been from a long period of pain and soul searching and with help I could understand more. Today I see that this process would have been easier if someone had told me that as a parent we have to try not to have pre conceived ideas of what our child will be or what we want them to be. My son didn't die but what need to be grieved was the child I created in my mind and things I imposed in my head about what he was going to be or do or believe.

I think that is what parents that have a constant struggle and suffering suffer with, they can't really obtain the happiness despite the condition of their child or they can't stop blaming someone, something or themselves.

I wanted someone to have told me that as parents we can have dreams about everything of course, we can dream for our child and build and work hard for it. But we can't impose our dream to reality or we can't be angry just because things didn't work the way we thought, I wanted someone have told me just to accept and live life and feel blessed with the life I was given to take care, enjoy the moment and whatever happens to him we will figure this out or we will work hard and accept and move forward with what makes our child happy but not about our self centered parenthood happy.

It's not about just when your child has a disability is not just about or preparing ourselves to the worse. Even in the course of our children's life we keep wanting to impose or make our children follow the path we think is correct, the person they should date, what university we dream them to attend, their religion, what sex they are going to be attracted to. It's about everything !

But when we see our children has some kind of mild disability,  can be just  a simple speech problem, then we deny, pretend and ignore, sometimes we don't act fast enough because we keep with the illusion that will get better because we want to hold on to the idea we made in our head of what our child should be.

That's  the lesson when Autism strikes  we have to remember: that is not ABOUT US, WHAT WE WANT WHAT WE WISH WHAT WE WANTED IT TO BE. It's about what it is and see from now on what attitude we are going to have it's about accepting and moving on.

Moving 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

Loving Lampposts Movie Review

When I was on my Amazon prime instant video browsing movies this days I decided to search Autism, to see what kind of movies they had and I saw this movie and got me intrigued it had great reviews. And I'm glad I watched so glad that I thought why I didn't watch this movie 2 yrs ago.

I think this movie is essencial to every single family that received the news of Autism, specially the recent diagnoses. 

It talks about the perspective of a father, he talks with Autistic Adults, covers science and the exploitation of what Autism become a profitable business to a lot of people. But what I loved is he showing parents that regards what happened believed in their children and their children have a voice sometimes not verbal, or sometimes not so outspoken as people think but they know what's going on and to see that was fantastic, this movie let me know I'm not a lone there are a lot of parents that don't live their life telling lies to themselves about cures but rather love and accepting the child for them to be the best they can be.

I love a Autist man which is married and have kids saying what helped him was Early intervention, music and above all love and patience. 

I already email my former Early Intervention team, my son's hospital Autism director program  and as many people I can because I so believe this movie is essencial to parents to start their journey and to do they own decisions from there.

Totally recommend !

Jana

Ipad apps for Autism Part 1

Today I'm talking about apps for Autism the ones I have been using, there is a lot to talk about in this topic so this is the first part more to come and also I will talk about resources.

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Apps that I talked about in this podcast :

Injini on their website you can take a look at the app and they even have some printables.

Monkey Pre School Lunchbox