A Very Special Toy Box: How to Find (& Make!) Developmental Toys & Activities for Children Who are Blind or Visually Impaired

Originally presented on December 16, 2021

by Amber Bobnar, Wonderbaby

Learn how to find the best toys for your child’s needs, including what to look for in off-the-shelf toys and how to adapt or make your own toys so they are appropriate for your child. You’ll also learn how to create an adaptive play environment or sensory space and how to use these spaces to facilitate learning. We’ll also discuss how to choose and adapt activity kits for children with special needs.

Transcript

Amber

I have a website that I’ve had going now since 2006, when my son was about a year old. I try to post support and resources for parents and caregivers of children who are blind, but for the most part, I’m a mom. Just so you know what my background is, my son Ivan, is 16 years old now, he is totally blind. He has LCA, but he doesn’t have any light perception and he is nonverbal. He’s in a wheelchair. He also has Joubert Syndrome and a pretty severe seizure disorder. So, a lot of the time when I’m talking about toys and developmental age, I’m going to be talking about things that are appropriate age-wise for babies, young children and toddlers. My son, for the most part, at 16, is still playing with a lot of these same toys, because developmentally, that’s still where he’s at. And we’re still working on a lot of those same goals. So, a lot of times, I’m going to refer to things like developmental age, rather than, you know, actual-years age, because it really depends on your child’s needs, and what they’re doing and what their goals are. 

So, with that, I’m going to share my screen and get started. We are going to be talking about toys today. And this is what we’re going to be talking about. We’re gonna look at why play is important, and how to use play time to facilitate learning. How to choose the best toys, and where to find accessible toys, and what that means for a toy to be accessible to your child. How to adapt toys, and one of my favorites is how to make your own toys. And then also one of my favorites is how to make a sensory play space, because those are awesome. And then you can’t talk about toys without giving them actual toy ideas. So, I have our 12 favorite toys, and then also adapting activity kits for kids with special needs.

I have no idea why my slides have that really nice animation. And I don’t know how to turn it off, so we’re going to have some animations in here.

Why is play important? So, a child’s job is to play. And you know, if you think about it, what is the kid supposed to do, they’re supposed to play and playtime is the time that they can learn and they can gain skills. So, you can have your child learning motor skills, memory, problem solving skills, vocabulary and communication, concept development, obviously, social skills if they’re playing with other children, or if they’re playing with you. And one of my favorites is building self confidence. And I talk a lot about giving your child the opportunity to succeed. You don’t want them to be frustrated with the toys they’re playing with, you want them to feel like they’ve done well.

So, some things to remember during playtime is that there’s no right way to play. If your child is using a toy in the way that it wasn’t designed to be used- that’s okay, we can look at that as creativity. If you can sit back, then sit back. So, in other words, if your child is able to do something independently, and they don’t need your help, don’t give your help. But at the same time, since we are talking about kids who have disabilities, kids who have special needs, a lot of times we are going to have to facilitate. And, then something that I learned with my son is that some kids just know how to play and some don’t. It’s the same thing with sleep. Some babies just know how to sleep, most of them don’t. And we kind of have to teach them how to do that. So, for a lot of kids, we have to teach them how to play, especially how to play independently. 

And then the last point here is, I was talking to an occupational therapist as I was putting these ideas together for this presentation, and she was telling me about all these amazing things that kids can gain through play. And I said, well, if play is so great, is there any time when play is bad? And she said yeah, when it self-stims. So, if your child is playing independently, but all of a sudden they revert to rocking, laughing or hitting themselves, that’s when you know you need to redirect their attention back to the play and away from self-stimulation.

So, this is a picture of my son. There’s a lot of pictures in here, in a lot of them he is very little so he’s a baby here, that’s Ivan as a baby. When we talk about play, there are different kinds of play. So there’s interpersonal and that’s like, body on body playing peekaboo. Face to face. Exploratory is when you start looking at how to interact with objects, i.e. toys, right? Functional play is when you start to realize that those toys do things and you start using them appropriately. Constructive play is like building blocks, Legos, puzzles, this can also be where crafts and creative play come in. Symbolic play is pretend scenarios, creating a pretend landscape. And then games with rules are something like, tag or Monopoly. So, in this talk, we’re talking mostly about exploratory, functional, and constructive play, because those are the types of play that involve toys. 

So, how to use playtime to facilitate learning. Play time is a learning time for babies and young children. But that goes both ways, right? That means that when they’re playing, we have an opportunity for them to learn something. But it also means that when we want them to learn something, we should make it fun. And five tips to keep playtime fun, but also facilitate learning. And this comes up a lot. And that is finding the just right balance when playing with your child and choosing toys. In other words, you want to challenge them so that they can grow, but you don’t want to frustrate them so that they just shut down and don’t want to play. And this one’s tough. But if you can do it, keeping toys close and predictable and always in the same spot and always within reach, is really helpful for kids who are blind.

I know that can be really difficult depending on your house and how things are set up. But if you can have a space that’s like this is where we play with our toys, and this toy is always in the same spot, it can be really helpful for them to be able to find the toys that they’re looking for independently. The third point is to give lots of opportunities to repeat an activity, which means you may be bored of reading that book or playing that game over and over again. But if your child’s still into it, and they’re learning something from it, then that repetition really helps to get that going in them.

And then one of my favorites too, is to use your daily routine as a way to incorporate playtime activities. The example I have here is having your child play in the kitchen while you’re making dinner. And that’s my example, because I do that all the time with my son. So he might be in his Rifton Activity Chair with his tray. And then I can give him pots and pans and wooden spoons, and he can be playing but also learning about what’s in the kitchen, while I also have the opportunity to make dinner because I need time to make dinner.

And then also lastly to offer play opportunities that encourage problem solving, which sounds like a big grand idea that can really be as easy as placing a bracelet on your child’s wrist and then letting them figure out how to get it off. We play a lot of crafts with my son and he loves stickers. And so I might take a sticker and put it on his right hand and then encourage him to use his left hand to take it off. And then vice versa, which is some nice fine-motor skills and also practicing midline. So, those are some problem solving things that he can do. Again, you know, keeping it to like your child’s developmental level. 

And then how to choose the best toys. So, this is kind of what I was talking about earlier. But do you want to be inside or outside the comfort zone? So, inside the comfort zone would be to watch how your child responds to toys and try to pick toys that are preferred. So, if they like soft objects, you go with soft objects. Outside the comfort zone is obviously if you want them to grow and learn, you might want to expose them to some non-preferred toys. So, you want to do both. You want to find a balance, again, between helping them be happy and having fun, but also pushing them and trying to promote them to grow and learn and do new things.

So, the example I have here, and this is my son again when he’s little and that’s his grandma with him, is the sticky box, which actually we still have. And I brought it with me. This is our original sticky box. And what we did is- this is a wooden block. And this is the sort of thing that is my son’s favorite thing to touch. It’s small, he can hold it in his hand. It’s hard, it’s defined. He knows exactly what it is. If you give him anything that’s soft or squishy he just couldn’t stand it. So, what I came up with was this idea of the sticky box. So it’s just a basket and I put in it all kinds of things that he hates. And I also got double-sided tape to put on the rim of the box, so the box itself is actually sticky, because there’s double-sided tape on the box.

And then some of the things we put in here are things like Play-Doh, which he couldn’t, I should say couldn’t, because he’s gotten a lot better with it. But he couldn’t stand Play-Doh because it was squishy, and squeezed between his fingers and it’s hard to define. And we put in Moon Sand and play foam and a pin-art board, which feels really weird on your hands. And again, it’s something that’s very difficult to define, and scrubbies that you would use in the shower. I also always keep a bag of dried beans and dried pasta, and a bowl. So we can put those in there, and we can touch those. And it started off as something that he really didn’t like. But we would bring it out, a couple times a week, and we would just touch a couple things in the basket, and then we’d be done. And eventually it became a game. And it actually really helped with his tactile aversion. And he’s gotten a lot better at being able to touch things that he used to hate touching. 

So, where to find accessible toys? When you are looking to buy a toy for a child who is blind, some things to ask yourself would be: is the toy safe and developmentally appropriate? Part of that might be if they chew on things, you know, does it have little pieces on it that might come off and they might choke on it? Is the toy durable? Again, like if they’re chewing on things? Is it going to be able to withstand that? I try to find as many multi-sensory toys as I can- I love it when there’s multiple aspects to a toy.

Does the toy represent a real object? So for example, I have this squishy tomato that’s in our sticky box. Is it a tomato? No. If I were to hand it to my son, would I say, “hey, this is a tomato”? I might. But if I say that, will he then become confused? Because if he’s never seen or felt a tomato before, will he think this is a tomato? So, when we’re working with kids who are blind, we want to be really careful about having toys that are representations of real objects and making sure they know the difference between this is a squishy toy that looks like a tomato, versus what an actual tomato is.

We also look to see if the toy is adjustable. Are there different ways we can change the settings on the toy? Especially if it’s like a battery powered toy? Where will you be using the toy? Is it indoors, outdoors, in the bath, on a wheelchair tray maybe. Does the toy involve using both hands? That’s something we look for a lot because we’re always working on fine-motor skills for my son. And, like I keep saying, does it offer the opportunity for success? Because you want our kids to have fun and not be frustrated. And then a lot of times we don’t think about this with kids with disabilities but is the toy popular? Is this the sort of thing that like all the kids their age is playing with? And then if they’re out in a social situation, and they’ve got that toy, will other kids see it and be drawn to it, and want to talk to them about it? Number ten, can the toy be used in social play?

And then, this is something I talked about a lot, especially to my friends, specialized toys versus mainstream toys. So, a lot of times we think, oh, well, you know, my son has special needs, so I need to go to a special needs store and buy special needs toys. I have an example here of some textured matching blocks you can get at American Printing House for the Blind, versus a touch and match board you can get at Amazon, they are not the exact same toy. There are pros and cons to both. We have owned both. And I will say that the one we got on Amazon, I like a lot better, it’s sturdier, it’s stronger, I feel like it’s better built. But at the American Printing House textured blocks, they don’t show it in the picture, but the bottom of the blocks are unfinished. They’re not painted, so they just don’t feel as nice on your skin. And at APH it is $72 and on Amazon it’s $20. So, I feel it’s definitely better to look for toys in mainstream locations because they tend to be a lot cheaper.

But, if you’re looking for your specialized toy outlets, that’s going to be something like APH, which is generally going to also be acceptable through Quota Funds. If you don’t know what Quota Funds are, talk to your teacher of the visually impaired and they can get you set up for that. There’s TSH Special Needs toys, Fun and Function, Adaptive Mall, Playability Toys, are all great places to look for toys that are designed specifically for kids with special needs. They do tend to be more expensive, but also if you have funding, like Quota Funds, or if you have funding through your Department of Education, they’re also more likely to pay for toys from those outlets, because they know that they are supposed to be for kids with disabilities.

And then the mainstream toy outlets are places like Amazon and Target, Walmart, Toys-R-Us, Discovery Toys, which I like a lot, Melissa and Doug and Lakeshore Learning. And by far, we get the majority of our toys from Amazon and Target because they’re the cheapest places to get them.

Then I wanted to go through some examples of these specialized toy places. So, this is just a screenshot of the website for American Printing House for the Blind. It’s going to be very specialized to kids with visual impairments, which is awesome. They have things like the reach and match alphabet tiles, which are really cool. Actually, we have the reach and match alphabet tiles and the mat that they come with. It was purchased for us by our TVI through Quota Funds, because it’s over $1,000. This is generally not a place you’re gonna go to buy your own stuff, because it’s really expensive. But there’s some really cool stuff here. 

I really like TSH, mainly because if you look at the top of the screen, they separate out their toys by goals. So you have visual, auditory, tactile body awareness, body movement, motor planning. I think that’s a great way for us to think about toys when we’re purchasing them for our kids. And Fun and Function is also awesome. They have a lot of really cool stuff for sensory rooms. If you’re in the business of designing a sensory room, then I’m jealous because that would be so much fun to have. Also very expensive, but also a place where we’ve gotten grants to cover things. So if you see the sensory toolkits here, there’s that break box, we actually have that. It’s got all kinds of neat multi-sensory fidgets and things in it. My son loves it. I think it’s like $400, which is ridiculous for what it is. But again, we didn’t pay for it. So, it’s nice to have, if you didn’t have to pay for it. Adaptive Mall…

Sheila

I wanted to jump in really quick. We had a question come up in the chat. So, they love the sticky box idea. And they’re wondering if you have any advice to offer for kids who are very hard on their toys. Durability is key. And so is safety. My eight-year-old twins with CVI and ocular concerns as well, have significant developmental delay often gravitates towards dog toys. Yeah, their dog’s toys, of course and or toys for older kids.

Amber

I would actually say looking at baby toys can be really helpful because a lot of those are designed to be chewed on. So we’ve gotten a lot of toys from the baby aisle. If you’re trying to get stuff that’s sticky though for the sticky box, that’s going to be stuff like playdough and slime. And that’s not going to be very durable. Because the stuff that’s durable is going to be harder and less sticky. But you could maybe do something like get something that’s harder and then put something in like a double sided tape on it so that there would be a sticky to it for at least a little while before it got too grimy.

But yeah, we do a lot of baby toys. Dog toys actually aren’t a bad thing, either. Because they are designed to be durable. We’ve used dog toys in the past too, not cat toys, cat toys are too small. So any other questions on that? Or should I go on?

Okay, I accidentally clicked my screen. So it went off of Adaptive Mall, but Adaptive Mall is really cool. And then Playability Toys I like a lot because they make a lot of their own products. And they have a lot of these, like, raised-line coloring books and things that you can’t find in other places. It’s a small organization. So they’re really friendly. And if you have questions, you can reach out to them and they’re very helpful.

All of those sites that have specialty toys- one of the things that I will do is I’ll go on someplace like adaptive mall, search for what they have there, and then go to Amazon and find something very similar, get the ideas and the inspiration there, and then go to Amazon and find something for a third of the price that’s very similar to what they’re selling there.

Okay, this is one of my favorite things, How to adapt toys. Okay, I’m getting excited now. Adding braille. We still have this toy, I have him right here. So this is Winnie the Pooh V-tech phone. And we put braille numbers on the numbers, so that you can feel the Braille. If your child is learning braille, if you think they’re going to learn braille, and when they get older, that’s great to put braille on absolutely everything. There was a point in my son’s life when we thought he might learn braille, that was before the epilepsy kicked in. But even now that we know he’s not going to be a braille reader, he still really enjoys the tactile elements of having things on the buttons.

I also have a picture here of the fridge phonics, Leapfrog’s Fridge Phonics that has the letters that you pop into the toy and then press the button, and it says the name of the letter and the sound of the letter. There’s a ton of room on the back of those to put braille. In this picture here, I have two different kinds of braille stickers, the ones that say, that have R and F and O at the bottom, that’s in print and braille, I got those from APH. So those are the Feel and Peel stickers from APH. And then the ones that are on the phone, that have just the numbers, I just got a clear plastic sticker sheet from Amazon, put that through a brailler, typed in the numbers and then cut it out. So you can do braille stickers, either of those ways. 

Adding texture. So this is a picture of our oceans, which I also have with me. And what I noticed, playing with it, is that there’s very clearly a front and a back. But if you have no vision, the front and the back feel exactly the same. So for the back, I just pasted some felt fabric. And now my son can tell tactually, there’s a front, and a back. Then this leads to us being able to do things like say, oh, let’s turn it over. Oh, and now that’s the front and that’s the back. It just gives us the ability to talk more about the toy, about what we’re doing with it.

Adding colors. So if you are purchasing toys, and your child has vision, you should look for as many high-contrast colors as you can, depending on your child’s division. But if the colors aren’t there, you can always add them in. So this is a picture of a wooden puzzle with shapes. The wooden part that shapes go into, the slots are the same color as the board. So they were very hard to see without the color. I added in the color using, again, just some felt and gluing it to the bottom. And now there’s more of a high contrast there. And so you can see them better if you have vision. 

And then making buttons bigger or easier to find. This is actually a picture of a foot massager, which is one of my son’s favorite toys, you know, it’s not really a toy. And it has these beads on there that you can roll your hands or your feet over, and you can feel the beads move. Then there’s a button in the center that if you press the button, the whole thing will vibrate. But the button is very flush with the rest of the device, so it was very hard for him to tactually locate that button. I was constantly having to bring his finger over and show him where the button was.

So, what I did was I just got a kind of thick foam sticker and stuck it on the button and now he can always find that button and present himself independently. Using the same concept of making buttons bigger and easier to find. This is a Fisher Price gumball toy. There’s this little tiny blue lever over on the right hand side that you’re supposed to press down and when you press that down, the balls roll around and come out the bottom. It lights up, it plays music, but my son had a really hard time finding that tiny little blue lever over on the side. So I took a cylinder-style wooden toy and rubber banded it to the lever so there’s like a huge lever now, and he can reach out and find that. It’s much easier for him with his fine motor skills to find that and push it down. 

Adding handles, we can add handles to just about anything. If you go to Home Depot and get yourself a drawer pull. It comes with a drawer pull and a screw. And you can pop that on anything that needs a handle. So wooden puzzle pieces are a great example of things that can be really hard to pick up and if you put a handle on it- now it’s a lot easier to pick up. This is a picture of a wicker box, and we had toys in the box, and my idea was that I wanted my son to open the box, get the toys out then put the toys back in. He had a really hard time getting his thumb under the lid and opening it. So I put a handle on it and it was a lot easier for him.

This is me being super smart. I’m really proud of this. You can add props to help prop things up. So we have this electric keyboard that my son loves. But the way he wants to play with it is he wants to sit on the floor and balance it on his lap. And that wasn’t working very well, it kept sliding off his lap. So I got those velcro stickers, you can just cut off as much Velcro as you need. Pop them on the bottom of four parmesan cheese containers, put those on the bottom of the keyboard piano, and now our keyboard piano has legs and can fit over his lap easily. Then if you want to take them off, they just pop right off because it’s Velcro. 

Making your own toys, this is also fun. I’m getting into the fun stuff now. So how to make a scented rattle. Trying to come up with some toys that you can make yourself and that are also multi-sensory. And this is again, this is my son when he’s really little. He’s a baby here. This is a Gerber juice container, and we took the lid off and got a hammer and a nail and poked holes in the top of the lid. And then inside you can put cloves, allspice, cinnamon sticks, anything that will make some nice noise and then also have a nice smell to it. So there’s a little multi sensory aspect to it. One thing to keep in mind is that if your child is going to chew on it, and drool into it, and then maybe tip it over, that drool is going to come back out of the rattle. So whatever you put in there should be something that’s okay for them to get in their mouth because they are going to end up sucking some of the juices out of it.

Making your own stackable sound blocks. These are old Gerber baby food containers that are designed to stack neatly in your pantry, which means that they click right into each other really nicely. Clean them out and put, different types of objects in them. Here, we’ve got some dried rice, some pom poms, some unpopped popcorn, some dried corn. And each one now makes its own unique sound. I used a hot glue gun to get the lids stuck on top. And now you have these really cool blocks that make a sound and that stack and click together really nicely. 

A bead container, I brought that with me, too. This is a Gerber cereal container. Inside, we put a bead necklace that we’ve cut so that instead of being a necklace, it’s just a long string of beads. And then what you can do is put it in the container and just have a little bit hanging out the top and it makes a lovely sound as it’s going in and out of the container. And the idea is it’s fun to shake it, it’s fun to hear going in and out. But the best part is, in order to really make it work, you need to hold the container with one hand, while pulling with the other, which can be a very difficult fine motor skill for some kids. But if you give them something interesting enough to do, then they’ll be more inclined to try and hold with one, pull with the other. 

Tactile matching game. This is one I came up with, too. So, these are old applesauce, snack cup containers. And at the bottom of each applesauce container, you use your hot glue and you just put some kind of tactile objects- that can be some felt Christmas bows. We’ve done paperclips, dried pasta, and seashells. And then if you do two of each, you now have a matching game. So you turn them upside down, mix them all up and then you pick one, touch to see what’s inside, pick another one and try to make a match. Now, if you are playing with some people who have vision and some people who don’t have vision, and you want an even playing field, you can get cupcake liners and pop those in the applesauce containers first and then put your objects in because then when you turn them upside down, you can’t see through and cheat if you have vision. 

We call this a sponge ball. So we took two sponges, cut them into fourths, I picked some high contrast colors. So we have a blue and an orange sponge. And then you just take a piece of string and tie them together and it automatically makes a ball. And it’s very lightweight, it’s easy to hold and throw, it’s really easy to pick up because it has so many different legs to the ball, and also makes a really fun bath toy. 

This is a shoe box pegboard. It’s a shoe box with some holes in it, and then the pegs are actually just golf tees. And then it’s just, you know a matter of putting the pegs into the holes. If your child has vision and you want to do high contrast, you can add color to the shoebox, you can paint the golf tees so that there’s some more color there. 

Lid matching, this is the easiest game you’ve ever seen. You get three different containers with three different lids and then you have to figure out which lid goes on which container. 

Clothes pin activities. There are a variety of different things you can do with clothes pins to turn into games. It’s all great for strengthening those hand muscles, working on your pincher grab. It can be anything from the picture on the left is a little bucket with clothes pins on the outside of the bucket. And the idea is just to grab a clothes pin and put it in the bucket. You can also do things where you need to match colors, or you need to match textures. So, you can have the red clothes pin goes on to the red part of the paper plate. If your child doesn’t have vision, you can do that with textures instead of color.

The Velcro bottle. So this is again using those Velcro stickers that you can get on Amazon, you can get them anywhere, and then getting little small wooden blocks and a recycled plastic bottle that you have in your house. It’s great if you have one with a handle like this one does, because then the idea is you can hold the bottle with the handle while your hand goes around the outside of the bottle looking for these blocks. And when you find a block, you can take it off and put it in the bottle. I love the sound of the Velcro coming off and the sound blocks going in the bottle. The more blocks you get in the bottle, the more sound you get when you shake the bottle. You can talk about how “Oh, sounds like you’ve got a lot of blocks in there. Let’s keep looking for more blocks.” This one’s a lot of fun.

Feeding the monster. So, this is kind of a craft that you can work with your child to make the monster. The monster is just made out of a Huggies wipe container with the lid up. And then the part where the wipes are supposed to pop out becomes the mouth. We just took some cardboard and cut them into squares, you could make your food in whatever shape or design you want. We just have these square pieces of cardboard that we say are crackers. And then you have to pick up the crackers and put them in the mouth of the monster. 

Then the scarf pool toy. Another one I came up with. So this is called an O Ball. They’re pretty common, you can find them on Amazon. I have the rattle one because I wanted it to be able to make noise when my son shook it. Then I just stuffed a silky scarf into the O Ball. And then his job is to try and pull the scarf out. Again, meaning one hand holds while the other hand pulls. And he’s actually had a lot of really great success with this one. We like this one. 

How to make a sensory play space. Okay, sensory play spaces are awesome. What is a sensory play space? Children who are blind or deaf-blind often remain really restricted in their movement and use of space. So, play space is supposed to encourage children to reach and explore and develop spatial awareness. It’s supposed to be a predictable environment. So, the toys should always be the same and always be in the same place. And it’s a place where your child can reach out and manipulate toys. It can come in a variety of sizes. So, I’m gonna go through a bunch of different play space ideas, but it can be really small like a small box. It can be a corner in a room. It can be part of your child’s everyday space, like an insert on their wheelchair tray. It can be big, like a large box, something they could crawl into. It can be a large area on a wall. 

Obviously, it could also be a huge sensory room, which I don’t have. One of these days if I get rich enough, we will have a sensory room. They come with different names. You might hear about a little room, a defined space, a stay put play space and sensory activity center. But the main idea is that the objects that are in the play space are predictable, and they’re always in the same place. Preferably, they would have high meaning to your child, these would be objects that are highly meaningful to your child. The space and the objects are all accessible to your child’s abilities, it gives them the opportunity to make choices, and they can easily detect where everything is in their space.

And, the reason why we make sensory play spaces is to encourage reaching and exploration to teach spatial awareness so they know where things are, improve your muscle tone in your arms while you’re reaching out to find things. Encourage vocalizations- that’s particularly for the little rooms and spaces that are in boxes, because there can be some nice echoing while they’re in there and so they might vocalize more. Teach the concept of object permanence that the toy is there, and then if I don’t touch it, or if I don’t see it, and go back, it’s still in the same place, it hasn’t disappeared. And, I really liked the idea that it teaches children that they have the ability to manipulate their environment, rather than always waiting for someone to come and move and manipulate them.

So, what can you put in your play space? A lot of people just think of toys and trying to find toys to put in a play space, but you can put all kinds of things in there. And it can be a lot of fun to just walk the aisles at Home Depot and find chains and ropes and chain links and weird things that you can put in a play space. Egg beaters, Slinky’s, springs, bells are fun, magnets and brushes, hanging cords. Anything that makes music, like a triangle would be great to hang in a play space. 

So, we’re going to look at play spaces from little to large. So, this is just a toy box. You might think oh, that’s not a play space, it’s just a toy box. But if that box always has the same toys in it, then that kind of starts that concept of the box in front of you. It always has the same toys, you can reach into this box and find and manipulate those toys. 

This is a wheelchair tray. I love this idea. What we have here is this string, kind of like a bungee string that’s holding all these toys in place. So whenever she reaches out to her wheelchair tray, she’s always going to find those same toys are still there. And if she throws them, Mom doesn’t have to go pick them up and clean them and put them back on her tray. They stay on her tray. 

This is a magnetic tray. So it’s like a cookie sheet. And then you get a bunch of toys and you put like sticker magnets on the back of the toys, and now they fit on the metal cookie sheet tray. And then again, it’s always the same toys, and then your child can work on moving them around on the tray. 

We love this idea, I did not come up with this idea. So, I won’t take credit for it, but I love it. And this is to make a play space on your child’s body by getting an apron or a vest and then getting rings and sewing them to the apron and then connecting the toys to the apron. So then all the toys are on their body and they can play with them on themselves. 

This is a texture board. So, you can get a poster board or a large piece of cardboard and put different textured materials on the board, maybe hang some toys from it and you have the texture board.

This is a really cool idea. They call it a ball board. So, it’s a large box with holes cut into the box and then toys hanging from rings at the top of the box. The idea is that you would take those toys and pop them through the hole and then you can use the string to pull the toy back out and do it again. 

A similar concept is the shaker egg board. So there’s an empty coffee canister connected to the board and then some felt and then you take easter eggs with Velcro on the bottom of them. They’re connected to the felt and then you can pick up the easter eggs and pop them into the canister. It’s also fun to put different things in the eggs so each one makes a different sound. 

This is really fun. We’ve done this- a hula hoop hanger. All you need is a hook in the ceiling and a hula hoop and some rope to hold your hula hoop up and then your child can lay on the floor and have the toys hanging above them. I like the slinky on this one. 

This is a sensory chair. So, this is PVC that’s been put together to create a frame around the chair and then the toys hang from the PVC pipe. And then, in this picture there’s just a chair but this would be great for kids in wheelchairs. You can just wheel the chair up to it and then they have this sensory space that is surrounding them that they can reach out and manipulate and play with. I have not made one of these yet, but I’ve been seriously thinking about doing this, I think my son would love it. 

This is kind of the traditional little room. So, it’s a box and your child is supposed to kind of like lay in the box, and there’s all these toys hanging above them, or on the walls next to them. And then again, if they vocalize in the box, that makes different sounds, they can kind of hear the echolocation bouncing off the walls. And all of the toys are always in the same space. But if you can’t make a little room, you can also get these basic, baby activity centers that will arch over the baby, and they usually have places for toys to hang. You can get a very similar concept with something that you can just buy off of Amazon. 

And this is a sensory corner. So this is getting bigger now. And it’s sort of like taking maybe those texture boards and the metal trays that you’ve made and attaching them to the walls in a corner, having a seat there that’s accessible to your child, this child is just sitting on a ball, which is a nice bouncy ball seat. It is also great for a child in a wheelchair. 

And then there are sensory walls, which is something else I’ve always wanted to build. You can buy them pre-made, they’re really expensive. So we haven’t actually gone out and gotten ourselves a sensory wall. But these are great, particularly for kids that, like we are always working on my son’s gross motor skills too. So trying to encourage him to stand and he would love to stand at something like this, because he’d be interested in touching all this stuff on the walls, he probably wouldn’t even notice how long he was standing.

This is a full sensory room. We all know what a sensory room is. And if you have the space and the money to fill a sensory room, definitely do it. Because if we had a sensory room, I think I’d probably spend more time in it than my son would, because they look awesome. 

These are my 12 favorite toys. So all of this talk about making toys and adapting toys, I thought it’d be fun to just kind of go through some off-the-shelf toys that we love. This is the colorful cube shape sorter. And what I love about it is that it’s not actually a shape sorter. So the shapes are there, but you don’t have to get the square into the square spot and the triangle into the triangle spot. It just has these elastic pieces going around the cube and you just have to kind of push each of the shapes through the elastic. So a great opportunity for success, even if you can’t actually get a square into a square hole. 

This I mentioned earlier is the Fisher Price Gumball Machine. It’s fun, it’s got balls, you put the ball in the top, you press the lever, it lights up, it plays a song and the ball comes out the bottom and then you if you have it like in front of you or on a table then the ball kind of shoots out the bottom and you have to catch the ball and put it back in the top again. 

I have this one right here actually, this is the Fisher Price Piggy Bank. And what my son loves about it is that when you take a coin and put it in the top, it sings a little song and makes a little noise. What I like about it is, unlike the shape sorter, this one you really have to get in the right way and because it’s the coin going through a coin slot, and so my son really has to work hard to get the feedback of that little music that the pig makes for him. You can also press the notes and it will oink and sing a little song. 

The Octotune musical toy, not battery powered, totally plush. Each of the eight arms when you squeeze it makes a different note. And it’s really easy to squeeze. And it always sounds nice, like all the tunes have a really nice sound to it. And when you squeeze it, it releases this slight vanilla smell, so it’s got that extra multi-sensory scent to it too.

This is kind of your classic wooden bead roller coaster. I love it because it’s not going to get messy. My son loves it because as a kid without vision, he’s not worried about losing the blocks. They’re always going to be in the same place and it’s fun for him to follow the wires with the beads and figure out where the ends are. 

This Is the LeapFrog Story Time Buddy. So, he’s a plush dog with numbers on his collar are associated with the books that come with him. If you press the number one, then he will read the number one story to your child, it’s really easy to put braille on his collar, to put braille on the book. But the other thing that I love about him is almost every part of this plush doll has a button in it. So, you’re pressing his nose, you’re touching his back, and it’s responding in some way. And my son likes that a lot. Sometimes he just takes it and just squeezes it as hard as he can and gets it to bark and make a bunch of noises all at once, because he gets all the buttons at once. 

This is the LeapFrog Picnic Basket. So, it has different shapes. The sandwich is a square, the watermelon is a triangle, the orange is a circle, and they fit into a plate or into the picnic basket in their special spot. So, there is a bit of shape sorting involved. The part my son loves the best is when the basket closes, it says close, and when it opens, it says open. So, we hear a lot of open, close, open, close and he just thinks that’s hilarious.

This is the LeapFrog Chopping Fun Learning Pot. Really cool because it comes with fake vegetables that kind of clip together. Then you have this little knife and we can chop the vegetables in half, and then put the vegetables in the pot. One of the things I really like about this is it also does the open/close thing with the lid so my son loves that. And then when you take the vegetable and put it in the pot, it makes a splashing sound, it recognizes that something was put in the pot. There’s this added feedback that really encourages kids to take things and put them in and take them out. 

I talked about this earlier, the LeapFrog Fridge Phonics. So, you’d have the letters and when you put the letter in the toy and press it, it’ll say the name of the letter, it’ll tell you the sounds that that letter makes, it will sing a little song about the letter. On the back of the letter, tons of space to put braille, so your child can have both the letter, and then on the back the braille. 

These are rainbow sound blocks. By the way, all of these are available on Amazon, if you go and search for them. Each of these wooden blocks has a different element in them; sand, beads, water, so they all make a different noise when you shake them. They’re all different colors. If your child has vision, and if you have a light table, these are a lot of fun to play with on a light table. 

The LeapFrog Music Table, we’ve literally had this my son’s entire life and he still hasn’t gotten tired of it. Obviously, it’s a musical table, all the little buttons make a different musical sound. One thing I really like about it is that it comes with these legs, so, it’s a table. If you have a small child, a baby, a toddler, they can stand at it, they can kneel at it. High kneel has always been something that we’ve been working on with my son for his gross motor skills, but the legs come off. So, you can take those legs off. And now we can place it on the table. I’ll put a towel underneath it so it doesn’t slide away from him, put it on the table and he has to stand at the table and press all the buttons. 

And then this is the Roller Ball Run. So you can use a hammer to pop each of these little balls into the track. And then they go down through the toy and come out the bottom. You don’t have to use the hammer, you can just use your fingers, which is what my son likes to do. Using a hammer is great though, because that’s using tools, right? But what we like about this is that the track inside the toy is all open. So, as the balls are rolling down, you can actually reach in and feel and see where they are and what’s making all that noise. 

And then, my last section is about activity kits, which is like our new favorite thing, because toys are awesome. Activities are like learning experiences, right?

When you buy a toy, you’re going to have that toy for a long time. When you buy an activity kit. It’s going to be like a one time thing, you’re going to do this activity and then you’re going to be done with it. But you get that experience of having done the activity with your child. When we are buying activity kits, we look for activity kits that have interesting textures, particularly for kids who have little to no vision, and also anything that allows something to grow, or change or build while you’re making it.

A Crystal Growing Kit is really cool because you can feel things change. Baking, cooking kits are a ton of fun. They have easy-to-follow instructions and then you get to eat what you make when you finish it. We also look for simplicity, a lot of times we’ll look at kits that are designed for younger kids because they’re really simple, which makes them easy to adapt to pretty much any needs. I also try to find kits that are comprehensive because I want to have everything included, if possible. I don’t want to have to go and buy a bunch of extra stuff. And then when I’m looking at kits, I look at their accessible options. How can I make it more accessible? Can I add braille? Can I add color contrast? Can I use a switch to activate a food processor if we are doing a baking kit. Can we introduce choice making, things like that. 

These are my favorite kits. This is the Insect Kingdom Felt Craft Kit. What I like about this is that it does not involve glue. Again these are all available on Amazon. And you just have to take these felt pieces and kind of string them through wires. It was really easy for my son to help, or at least do hand-over-hand with me, while we were doing it. And then you can feel as you add each piece, you can talk about how it keeps getting bigger and bigger. He really liked that,too. 

Baketivity Kits- I cannot say enough about them, they are awesome. They are so much fun. They have everything you need in there. It’s all pre-measured. The instructions are really easy to follow. All you need to do is open them. You can smell, and touch and taste all of the different ingredients, talk about how the ingredients go together. I think all of their recipes are sweet. So they’re all like cookies and cakes and things. I don’t think they do anything savory, and they’re all great. So even if you’re not a good cook, they come out really good. They do have a subscription service which you can also get on Amazon.

There’s another kit that I don’t have in here called Eat 2 Explore. They do savory stuff and they do it like by country. So they might have an India kit and in there are a bunch of ideas for foods you can make from India. Those are a bit more advanced, but they are a lot of fun. Baketivity though, simple, easy to follow. All their cookies taste delicious. 

National Geographic Kits is another one that I can’t say enough great stuff about. This is the Mega Gemstone Dig Kit. It does get messy, so if you don’t like messy you might want to skip this. But if you’re okay with that, it comes with this big sand block, and inside are all these gemstones. You get the sand wet and it starts to dissolve and then you can use your fingers or the tools that come with the kit to dig in and find the gems. It comes with a booklet in the kit that tells you what all the different stones are so you can identify them. They have fossil dig kits, dinosaur egg dig kits, geodes. They have a ton of stuff, just search National Geographic kits. They’re really a lot of fun. I love them. 

Did you know that you can make Root Beer using yeast? I had no idea. But now I do because we got a Brew It Yourself Root Beer Kit and we made our own root beer. Ivan helped stir everything. We added the yeast and it actually came out tasting like delicious, sparkly root beer. It makes a lot of root beer. So, either be ready to drink a lot of root beer or have people to give root beer away to. 

Making your own dog treats. We love these because we have a dog so it’s fun when you actually make something that you can feed to the dog when you’re done. 

And then this is the last one. It’s the Wooden Birdhouse Kit. You can find these again on Amazon. They click together, but they do need glue to stay together. They usually come with some kind of paint set so you can paint them. We’re just starting to get into painting with my son. We put sand in the paint to give it a texture so that when he paints and it dries, he can feel where he painted. But most of the time when we decorate things like this, we use those big thick foam stickers because they’re easy for him to feel and he can help put them on. He really likes the glitter stickers because they have a lot of texture to them.

These birdhouse kits, you can put birdseed in them and put them outside. They’re going to last you about two to three months, especially in New England where we are. But it’s okay because they usually come in sets of like two or four. So, once it breaks down and you throw it away, you just get to make a new one. And I think that’s everything. So, that’s all I have to say about toys.

Sheila

That’s awesome. Thank you so much Amber. I love the root beer kit. And I have a lot of gift ideas now for my nieces and nephews.

Amber

Yeah. I have a couple of new National Geographic kits in the basement right now that will be coming out for Christmas.

Sheila

Awesome. Does anyone have any questions for Amber? I know that there was one actually that came into the chat. And it was, is there a list of organizations that will help fund some of the expensive toys, and is there a list of toys as well?

Amber

The toy list that I have on here, I have on my site, if you look at the bottom of the slides I have a bitly link.  Bitly/toy-guide. So you can go there, and you can find all the toys that I mentioned today. And there’s links to them. They’re all available on Amazon. If you’re looking for places that will do grants, if you go to WonderBaby.org and search for something like grants, I have a lot of lists of grants. A lot of the places I list do things that are kind of bigger, like they’re gonna help you build a wheelchair ramp, or buy a wheelchair-accessible van or something that’s really expensive. A lot of those places would also help with toys, they actually would probably enjoy being able to help people fund things that aren’t as expensive. But the places that we’ve used most often are the Quota Funds through our TVI. And we also get money through the Department of Education. So DESI, at least in Massachusetts, does give money out to special needs kids to help enhance their learning. And since a lot of these toys are developmental toys, or are sensory toys, they will help pay for that.

Sheila

Great, thank you. It looks like there’s a lot of positive feedback coming in through the chat. Cool. Yeah. One last question. So this person has a newborn, and they’re unsure of his vision as of now. They’re thinking of using puff paint to highlight toys. Whenever there is a number one, or a letter, would you suggest tracing what is there or using braille?

Amber

I think it probably depends on the toy. If there is space, for example, on the phone here, there’s enough space here for braille. If you think there’s a possibility of them reading braille, I would say start going for braille as soon as possible, because we’re not going to give our kids fake print if they’re going to be print readers, you know, like, have them actually have access to braille. But, if it’s more of like, a round ball toy where the stickers aren’t really going to fit on it very well, then I think tracing it in a puff paint is a great idea. We’ve used puff paint a lot, just to at least give them that tactile aspect to the toy so they can find it.

Sheila

Thank you. If anyone else has any questions, please feel free to send me an email and I will get those questions answered for you from Amber. We will be sending out the recording and a copy of the PowerPoint later this week to everyone who has been asking for it. So thank you so much Amber, this was awesome. There’s a lot of great information.

Amber

Yeah, I’m sorry, I kind of threw a bunch of stuff out real fast. And you can also go to WonderBaby.org. There’s a contact link and you can email me through there, too. And I’d be happy to answer any questions. If anybody has any follow up. 

Sheila

Thank you. Thank you everyone for coming tonight.