Showing posts with label autism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label autism. Show all posts

Monday, November 12, 2012

Educational Insights Design and Drill Activity Center Review

Educational Insights Design and Drill Activity Center
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This play set is wonderful! It is easy to use and entertaining for preschool to early school age children. While kids are having fun playing, they are improving their fine motor skills and patterning. They can be creative with their own designs or learn to follow one of the included pattern cards. The set includes 3 bits for use with the drill or screwdriver handle and 5 different colored large screws. The drill has forward, off, and reverse settings and makes drill sounds at a reasonable volume. Overall a great buy.

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Children love using the Design & Drill Activity Center to create their own designs, or following the set's activity cards to make pictures and patterns, from trains and boats to flowers and fish. Just snap any one of the drill bits into the power drill or the screwdriver handle, grab a handful of big bolts, and turn on the learning fun. Twenty activity cards (10 make-a-picture cards, 9 follow-the-pattern cards, and one make-your-own card) provide young learners with tasks from simple to challenging. Requires 3 "AA" batteries (not included).

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Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Phonics Word Master Review

Phonics Word Master
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The Phonics Word Master is an excellent teaching toy, especially if you have a child struggling with basics of language skills.
Hooked on Phonics is primarily a tool to help teach reading skills, but this particular toy is interesting because it does an excellent job of pronouncing letters and words without lots of flashing lights and distractions that may inhibit children who are ADHD or autistic spectrum.
This toy ties the visual representations of letters and words together quite nicely with a straightforward pronunciation of the related sounds.
This toy should also be an excellent tool to help ANY kid learn the basics of reading.

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Phonics Word Master is designed to teach your child the fundamental building blocks of reading: letter names, letter sounds, and beginning spelling, using the Hooked on Phonics curriculum. Fun music and engaging animations entertain and the Skill Builder Review Button shows off what your child just learned!
Features:

LCD screen for visual reinforcement
Full alphabet keypad
Skill Builder Review Button
Seven interactive modes
Identify Letter Names
Find Letter Names
Identify Letter Sounds
Find Letter Sounds
Spell a word
Sound out a word
Alphabet Learning Song
Requires 3 "AA" batteries, included.
Measures 10.3" W x 8"HM/ul>

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Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Sequencing Puzzle Cards Review

Sequencing Puzzle Cards
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I have used these cards in a math class for developmentally disabled teenagers and they loved it. The cards show a child doing a simple task in order. We put all of the pieces out at once and asked students to put them together as fast as they could, which required them to think about the steps in order to properly sequence the activity. For the price, it is a great tool for learning.

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Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Learning Resources LER6900 Time Tracker Programmable Electronic Timer Review

Learning Resources LER6900 Time Tracker Programmable Electronic Timer
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We bought this to use as a timer for my daughter who is almost 4. We were all tired of the endless hassles involved in trying to get ready to go out, go to bed, and so on.
It has worked remarkably well. Now I can start the timer a half hour before we leave for preschool, and she knows when she has to start hurrying, and also realizes when she doesn't yet have to. When it announces "Time's up!", she knows that we're *going*.
Strong points are that the timer is colorful and attractive, and gives feedback in several ways. I can look at the digital display and know exactly how much time is left. My daughter can see the green, yellow, and red lights, and know roughly where she stands. The flashes before the color changes and the programmable audible feedback are very helpful, too. It just gives a lot of different ways for us to understand how much time is left.
The main drawback is that the controls are awkward. There is both a manual and an automatic mode, but they are both pretty similar. "Manual" means you set the amount of time for each phase, along with the optional sounds. "Automatic" means you set the total time, and the percentage of the total for each phase. Once you have a standard one set, you can reuse it (which is good for our 30-minute morning routine), but if you need to change it (like this morning, I only had 20 minutes) you have to do some button-pushing, and you need to choose the sounds for each phase as well as the time.
My guess is that we'll eventually settle on a couple of standard programs and just leave it at those. It's well worth using, regardless, but the awkwardness of the controls keeps me from giving this five stars.
One last note: the picture of the product is slightly misleading. The numbers on the digital display are quite small; about half as large as they appear in the picture. And the back of the tower is all solid blue: the colored lights are only on the front. That's not a problem, because you can see from a wide range of angles, but for some reason I thought the lights would be visible all around.
This item has definitely reduced the stress level on all sides. There is less nagging, less fussing, and more cooperation.

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Keep students on track with programmable electronic timer. Set green, red and yellow lighted sections and six sounds to indicate time remaining. LCD and volume controls. Requires adapter (LPNLER2901), sold separately, or four AA batteries (not included).

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Tuesday, October 9, 2012

SpongeBob SquarePants: Memory Game Review

SpongeBob SquarePants: Memory Game
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My son got this in his Easter basket almost half a year ago. He is 5 years old, a huge SpongeBob fan, and has autism. He was enjoying matching games at the time, and so when he unwrapped this he was thrilled!
To say this has had a lot of use since he got it is a major understatement. For months it got daily use, and he still plays with it 2-4 times a week. Not only does he love it, but his typical 3-year-old and 2-year-old sisters try to steal it from him whenever he has it out! His 4-year-old cousin was also trying to play with it during the Easter festivities.
I found that it was great for his vocabulary (he would label the picture on a card when it went missing), especially. And I liked that there are a ton of cards in the set...that way you can vary small games or do one big game if you want more of a challenge. He could take 10-16 cards to school in a ziploc bag and use them as a reinforcer.
This was WELL worth the cost, and I recommend it to anyone with a preschooler/kindergartener who likes SpongeBob!

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Sunday, September 16, 2012

Shape 'N Color Coaster by Anatex Review

Shape 'N Color Coaster by Anatex
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This toy is great! I am an early childhood special educator that works with birth to three aged children and I have used it (supervised) with my kiddos of typical development, special needs, and children with autism that had the fine motor skills to put the shapes on the post. It has several shapes and colors that when matched on the appropriately colored posts aid in sorting and matching skills and are fun to watch as they go down the different shaped posts. It is a great way to work on pre-language skills and signs by holding a bunch and giving then a couple at a time encouraging the word or sign for 'more.' Great toy! The only downfall is that the holes are small and it is definitely geared toward the other 2's to 3's, but a great way to communicate, use circles of communication, interact, engage, play, and learn!

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This panel is based on the award winning Pathfinder. It?s great for homes, doctors? offices, and waiting rooms. The Pathfinder Panel is great for visual tracking, fine and gross motor dexterity, hand-eye coordination, and developing sensorimotor skills. Hardware included. Measures 24" x 24" x 2". Recommended for ages 3 years and up.

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Sunday, September 9, 2012

Smart Snacks Sorting Shapes Cupcakes Review

Smart Snacks Sorting Shapes Cupcakes
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This is an excellent toy for both pretend playing and shape matching. All parts are made of a heavy-duty soft rubber. Vibrant colors. Same can be said of the stacking ice cream cone sister product made by the same company. It fits perfectly into the oven of the Step2 Lifestyle Kitchen. My two year old daughter and 4 y.o. son both love playing with this.

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Sort shapes with these fun cupcakes. They look good enough to eat, with yummy white frosting and colorful sprinkles. Great for developing fine motor skills and shape recognition, these 2-part cupcakes pull apart to reveal a hidden shape. Each shape fits tightly into the matching pan. Shapes include square, triangle, clover, half-moon and circle. Six cupcakes measure 2.5" x 2.25".
Awards:
Honors Award Winner-National Parenting Publications Awards for Children's Resources (NAPPA-2003)



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Sunday, August 26, 2012

Learning Resources Pretend and Play Teaching Telephone Review

Learning Resources Pretend and Play Teaching Telephone
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This toy can be used by babies and toddlers and up. Younger kids can use it simply as a pretend phone. When certain buttons are pressed there is a dial tone sound, a ringing sound, and a "busy signal" sound. My youngest was one year old when he began playing with this, randomly pressing buttons, listening, and really pretending to talk.
Older kids (5 or maybe 4) can use this as a teaching tool, with the parent. As described by the manufacturer (above) this has the capability to program in numbers, record your voice, and practice calling 911 or practice calling other important phone numbers.
So far we've only used the toy to play with during imaginative play. My kids have played with it so much that it is worth the cost. Kids who visit for playdates also gravitate to this toy and love to play with it. I highly recommend this as a great toy for pretend play.
Also great from this manufacturer is the pretend cash register.

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With the Pretend and Play Teaching Telephone it's easy to teach telephone numbers that are important to your child! Program in any telephone number (with or without 1+area code). Record a message for your child. When your child dials the programmed number correctly, they hear your message! Program a new telephone number and record a message - again and again! Teaching Telephone features 11 digit display, big buttons for little hands, note pad holder with note paper included, handy telephone number reference and more! For additional teaching fun a Teaching Telephone Activity book is sold separately. Telephone measures approximately 7" x 7.5". Requires 3 "AA" alkaline batteries (included).
Awards:
Dr. Toy, Best Children's Vacation Products (1999)
Parent's Guide to Children's Media (1999)
Child Magazine's Best Toys of the Year, Toddlers (1999)
Working Mother Magazine's 30 Top Toys (1999)
Parent's Magazine Best Toys of the Year (1999)
National Parenting Publications Awards (NAPPA) Honors (1999)
ASTRA Holiday Picks K-12 (1999)
Babyzone's Amazing Toy Award Winner (1999)
Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Platinum Award (2000)
Informal Educational Products Award of Excellence (2000)
Toy Tips Trusted
The Good Toy Guide, Recommended (2000)- UK
Fox 8 Educational Top Toys (2000)
NAPPA Honors Award Winner (2002)



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Sunday, August 12, 2012

U-Play Mat, At-Home Speech and Language Development System for Toddlers & Preschoolers: Deluxe Set Review

U-Play Mat, At-Home Speech and Language Development System for Toddlers and Preschoolers: Deluxe Set
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As a speech therapist I really love this product. Not only is it a great therapeutic tool, but it's a great product for parents! The shape of the mat encourages quality interactions with your child, and the adorable images on the cards will help to keep children motivated and engaged. I would recommend this product to the parents of any young child. The theme based cards will help to organize your play time, and the tote makes storage and clean up easy! This mat and the accompanying cards can be used to enhance your child's language development. Using this product to engage your child in productive structured play can increase vocabulary, improve following directions, help your child to engage in conversation, and improve overall play skills. This is truly a great way to play with your children!!!

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Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Smethport Tabletop Magnetic Sentence Builders Review

Smethport Tabletop Magnetic Sentence Builders
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Some sentence building sets have weird verbs that can't be changed for tense, this has magnets for -ing, -ed, and -s which really helps a LOT with constructing sentences that make sense. They also have plenty of each part of speech to make fun and interesting sentences. It's helping my son, who has a severe communication delay, to express himself better.

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827 Features: -Sentence builder tabletop magnetic set. -Great tool to develop early sentence building skills. -Expands on vocabulary, creative writing, reading and spelling skills. -Words are color coded based on parts of speech. -Includes over 150 word / punctuation magnets, magnet storage board and activity guide. -Ages 5 and up. -Overall dimensions: 9.5'' H x 12.5'' W x 1.5'' D.

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Monday, June 18, 2012

Fisher-Price? Laugh & Learn Learning Vacuum Cleaner Review

Fisher-Price? Laugh and Learn Learning Vacuum Cleaner
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I like most of Fisher Price's Laugh and Learn products so I was very disappointed with this vacuum. I have similar complaints as the previous review:
1) The height of the vacuum is VERY short. My daughter is 20 months and on the short side. She almost has to bend over to use it already. I don't know how they market this for up to 3 years of age. It would definitely be too small for a 3 year old.
2) The big purple wheels in the back turn but there is this plastic molding that is in the shape of a wheel underneath the vacuum cleaner that doesn't turn at all. It just drags on the ground. So this would be ok if you use it on carpeting but on hardwood floor, it almost scrapes up the ground. I don't understand by they didn't make this front "wheel" actually spin too.
3) The vacuum doesn't stay upright! It's a pain to store because I have to prop it up with something. If i don't, it just lays on the ground and takes up a lot of space. Everytime my daughter is playing with it, she has to bend all the way to the floor to get to the handle.
4) There aren't many features to this at all. The only features are the on/off switch and the wheels/front part that spin and make music. There is this red knob and green spinning ball that do nothing at all.
5) I don't know why this is called "Laugh and LEARN". There is really no learning. They sing the alphabet so fast that I can barely keep up, let alone a 2 year old.
I haven't looked into any other toy vacuum cleaners but for the price of this, I would have expected it to do a lot more and have better features.

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Saturday, May 26, 2012

Wild Planet Animal Scramble Review

Wild Planet Animal Scramble
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{Be forewarned! I am going into great detail because this is the first review and I may have spent less time in Target debating over this purchase if I had known this beforehand. Sorry for being so longwinded!}
I bought this game a few hours ago so I can't say how long it will last, but it sure is fun! I was going to get the regular Hyper Dash for my daughter even though it is for older kids, but I saw this one and (after much debate) I decided to get it instead. Not only is it adorable, but it burns energy. Although the regular Hyper Dash would probably have been more fun as a family game (adults enjoy it too, from what I hear) this game is very fun for her to play by herself or with a friend. Her and her cousin have been playing it in the "treasure hunt" mode, which is like hide-and-seek, for awhile and love it.
Here is how it works. There are 4 different modes of play (play alone, play with group, treasure hunt and memory) and 5 different levels. When you play alone, you spread out the four animals and the base (giraffe) calls out animals, colors, sounds, attributes or letters (depending on the level) and the child "tags" the corresponding piece with the base. You can keep all of the pieces in front of your child so that they can sit and play or you can spread them out around the room so that your child has to run around to get to them. We even put one up a couple steps so that the kids had to climb to get to it. At the end the giraffe tells you how long it took you to finish so that you can try to beat your record. Group play is the same except that the base tells you when to pass to another player. Treasure hunt is just like hide-and-seek. One player takes the giraffe and counts. The other player hides the animals and then the giraffe calls out the names of the animals one by one for the player to find and "tag." This mode is definately the favorite so far. My only complaint is that the giraffe only counts to ten and the kids don't have enough time to collect and hide the other pieces. There is no way to pause the giraffe either, so as soon as one person finds all the pieces he goes right into counting for the next person. I guess kids have short attention spans anyway, so they aren't complaining! In memory mode the giraffe calls out 1 animal name, then 2, then 3, etc. and the player has to find them in the order they were called.
Other than the issue in treasure hunt mode that I mentioned, there is one other thing that I was a little dissappointed about. The box that this game comes in cannot be used to store the pieces because it has a hole in the front that is big enough for the pieces to fall out. Even though I would prefer to have a place to keep the pieces, it's not dissappointing enough to take off a star. This game is still great!
Put simply:
The pros: Pieces seem durable, cute, many modes of play, daughter loves it, active game, unique and fun!
The cons: Not enough time to hide the pieces in treasure hunt mode, no box for storage.
I'm definately glad we bought this!
*UPDATE* - I took this into my Autistic Support class and the kids love it! It's hard to find games that all of the children will play, but they all participate when we play this one!!!

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From Wild Planet:"Animal Scramble is a really fun game and we thank each customer for their honest feedback; it was through your reviews that we learned how to improve the design of this toy. Our engineers and have made alterations including re-designing the pegs to be more durable and keep the animals on their bases.If you experience any problems at all with this game, we ask that you please contact us via email at animalscramble@wildplanet.com."From the makers of the popular Hyper Dash games, Animal Scramble is the listen-and-learn game of animal tag. Set out the animals, and listen to the giraffe call out friendly, encouraging clues. Which animal is green? Who says "rooooar?" Kids must scramble to the correct animal and tag it with the giraffe. This active learning game lets kids move, have fun and build coordination as they learn colors, numbers and animal sounds. Five levels of run-around fun, from easy to hard, allow this game to grow with your child. Requires three "AAA" batteries, not included.

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Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Smethport Pocket Chart Card Set Early Math Skills Review

Smethport Pocket Chart Card Set Early Math Skills
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I got these for my son's homeschooling and I couldn't be more pleased with these little cards. They come scored in 2-3 rows of 7 cards, but you don't even have to take them apart since they are scored so perfectly. This are VERY sturdy, thick and have a very nice laminate surface. It's nice that you can store them in the same box they come in, but I personally think the box could've been smaller to provide more storage possibilities, but this box still fits nicely in my plastic drawer cart. These are 3x3 so they fit on some hundreds pocket charts(the bigger ones). Also the pictures on the cards are bright and cute, it doesn't look like they don't fit or tilted, this set even has 2 long pictures made of several cards(5-7 I think) and they align perfectly, love that the cards are double sided wich saves you from having a mess of cards! And those little apple trees are the cutest thing!!
Im definitely buying the other card sets from this brand.
Delivery was fast and product was in excellent condition!

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The Early Math Skills card set starts with simple counting and 1 to 20 number recognition. Then it advances to addition, subtraction, size, linear measurement, early fractions, and simple equations.Ages 4 & Up

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Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Learning Playground Phonics Tiles Review

Learning Playground Phonics Tiles
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These tiles are great for learning to build sentences and for learning sight words. They are durable plastic so they don't bend like our cardboard ones have.

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Wednesday, February 15, 2012

WALKING ROPE Review

WALKING ROPE
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essential for preschool classes; provides a great visual for line walking; makes assigning place in line using color loops easy.

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Monday, February 13, 2012

Tomy Gearation Review

Tomy Gearation
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Gearation Activity Set is a winner! The colorful magnetic discs interlock, giving little hands an opportunity to learn about cogs, gears and magnets simultaneously. With 2 speeds of movement and a seemingly unending number of combinations, this toy allows children to create their own "moving picture" complete with sound! The discs are colorful, well-made and easy for a 3-4 year old to interlock. It's movement is messmerizing to children and adults as well. A great toy!

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Gearation amazes kids with its 11 brightly colored, turning, roataing, goofy gears. Turn it on and add gears and watch as they flip, turn and almost mesmerize. Control the speed with the fast or slow button.

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Saturday, January 21, 2012

Melissa & Doug Deluxe Magnetic Responsibility Chart. Review

Melissa and Doug Deluxe Magnetic Responsibility Chart.
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I bought 2 of these for my 3 and 5 year olds after reading these reviews. But I couldn't find a review that stated the titles of the responsibilities for those of you wanting to know if it will work for you; which for most it should cuz it covers most. Here they are: get ready for bed, get dressed, take bath, cear table, put toys away, keep hands to self, share, brush teeth,stop whining, apologize, say please, thank you, help with indoor/outdor chores, no teasing, show respect, load/empty dishwasher, put clothes in wash, don't use bad language, set table, take care of pet, do homework, make bed, clean room, take out trash, keep hands to self, plus 2 blank to write your own.
My 5 year old took to it right away as we placed all her responsibilities on the board. She was soooo excited and said I'm going to do that more, etc. She even added some resp. she usually wouldn't do, cuz she wanted to get more magnets; so at the end of the week we count them, assign a monetary allowance for each magnet earned (maybe 5 cents), and she can get a little toy or treat at end of week. I figured with 7 days a week and 10 resp. she could earn around 3.50 week; that's big to her right now!!

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Help kids understand the concept of behavior and rewards. This entertaining, magnetic activities board feature the innovative combination of magnets and wood. Includes a dry-erase board and 134 magnets depicting behaviors and rewards. Measures 16" x 12" when closed; 16" x 24" when open.

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