Holiday Gift Ideas by Developmental Therapists

Blue Bird Day Therapeutic Preschool & Kindergarten — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 11:39:16 +0000

Below are some unique gift ideas to help build children’s global development and play skills.

Fisher Price: Cash Register

Cause-and-effect toy
Model while saying these words: Put in/Take out, Open/Close, Push/Pull
Give them a turn (practice turn-taking and sharing attention)
Counting coins (1:1 correspondence)
Color Identification
Pretend Play: Pretend to buy items (toys, food, etc.)

Spike the Hedgehog

Great toy to expand fine motor coordination
Counting
Color Identification: Following directions: “give me COLOR/put in COLOR”
Taking-Turns

Busy Book for Kids

Targets:

Fine Motor skills, Hand-Eye Coordination, and Problem Solving
Color, number, and shape identification
Letters: identification, early spelling
Categorization and Classification skills: matching and sorting

Includes:

Puzzles (sequencing), Animals, Food, Weather, Body Parts

Coogam Wooden Block Puzzle

Targets problem-solving/Spatial reasoning skills
Can practice asking for “help”
Color and shape recognition
Fine Motor Skills and hand-eye coordination
Constructive play: building geometric patterns/figures (pyramid, robot, fish, etc.)

Coogam Wooden Tower Stacking Game

Following rules: taking turns rolling the dice and fine motor skills to remove the pull of a corresponding color block
Cause-and-effect play
Hand & Eye coordination
Color identification
Matching

Visit our Gift Guide page to see our other gift guides, created by our Occupational, Speech, Behavior, Developmental, Physical, Feeding, and Social Work therapy teams!

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Holiday Toy List to Support Speech-Language Development

Blue Bird Day Therapeutic Preschool & Kindergarten — Thu, 03 Dec 2020 19:53:37 +0000

The holiday season is here and parents may be wondering which toys they can buy for their child that also support their development. The best toys to support your child's speech and language development are traditional, timeless toys that do not make noises or talk for your child. When a toy talks to a child, parents talk less, which causes the child to be less engaged and therefore vocalize less. Ditching the batteries and getting back to the basics is key. Less is more when it comes to choosing toys that are developmentally appropriate for your child.

Here is a list of non-tech toys that are favorites amongst speech-language pathologists to boost a child's communication and social interaction: