I am so excited about the buzz around retailers and manufacturers’ interest in serving the special needs community by making it easy for parents to enter a store and find a toy or game that would address their child’s specific area of disability.
I just read that Learning Express has released a “Skill Building Toy Guide for Children with Special Needs,” picturing products in eight skill building categories … Fine Motor, Gross Motor, Language and Speech, Cognitive, Cognitive, Social Skills and Self-Esteem, Sensory Processing, and Oral Motor. Although I am pleased that they are leading the industry in providing such a guide, I was disappointed that their team of professionals who contributed to the guide did not include a speech language pathologist, and that most of the products in the speech and language section involved letters, and word-making. I guess I just need to continue to communicate that language learning begins way before kids start to form words (which is certainly important) and parents of kids with special needs would benefit from some great games that teach vocabulary, questions, categories or grammar. “Jake and the Neverland Pirates Neverland Challenge” by Wonder Forge, “Tell Tale Fairy Tale” by Blue Orange Games , “Feed the Woozle” by Peaceable Kingdom or “Roll ‘n Play” by ThinkFun would all be great products to include on that page.
I guess I have more work to do to communicate what brings about language learning!
