Provided by Laura Simmons-Martinez, Technology Project Director
Team of Advocates for Special Kids, task@taskca.org
AblePlay is a toy rating system that provides parents, special educators and therapists with comprehensive information about the developmental skills those toys promote. Check out this list of Miniland Toys With Able Play Certification
Special needs toys need to be safe, fun and build children’s intellectual, physical and emotional skills. Their toys, games and puzzles will keep them entertained for hours, while improving logic, problem solving, hand-eye coordination and memory skills. They sell a vast selection of unique special needs toys, including blocks, cognitive play, educational, magnetic activities, fine and gross motor, and pretend. Foster your child’s imagination and developmental skills with one of these great items.
Melissa and Doug Special Needs Toy Guide: A Resource for Therapists and Families
This helpful guide has toys broken into fine motor, gross motor, cognitive skills, speech and language, social and emotional, life skills, sensory awareness and more!
Hand-picked, reasonably-priced gifts that help kids with Down syndrome, autism, ADD, SPD, cerebral palsy, developmental delays and other special needs. Each of the gifts encourages fine-motor and gross-motor skills, speech, communication, imagination, cognition and social skills.
Toys for Visually Impaired Children
There is no better source for ideas than our friends at Wonder Baby, an organization devoted to helping parents of young children with blindness, visual impairments or other disabilities. Wonder Baby is project funded by the Perkins School for the Blind.
Toys R Us Toy Guide for Differently-Abled Kids
This complimentary, one-of-a-kind resource speaks to a child’s individual needs and offers qualified toy recommendations based on research from the National Lekotek Center, a nonprofit organization that evaluates all of the toys featured in the Guide.
FREE HOLIDAY APPS
Christmas Music: 10,000 FREE Christmas Songs (for iPhone and iPad)
Do you love a Christmas tune or two? You can listen to thousands of free holiday songs with the Christmas Music app. All of the app’s music is vetted to be from Creative Commons or independent musicians, which means they are all completely legal so you can download classic and new holiday music songs. Apple says it has been rated 5 stars by over 700 reviewers and is consistently ranked as a Top 100 Music App in over 50 countries. This app is free and available for Apple iPhones and tablets.
Christmas is here! Here is the ultimate quiz to get you in the Christmas mood! Hundreds of guessing games for the entire family to play!
This hilarious app will bring the family together. Upload each family member’s face from your phone and put them onto one of the elves’ bodies. You can then watch your family come to life as they dance and sing to a Christmas-theme in a video. The video can then be shared via e-mail or Facebook. This app is free and available for both Apple and Android.
