This super-cute instrument set is great for all young children, but is especially effective with children who have disabilities. When teaching our children, all of whom have moderate to severe developmental delays, it's often difficult to find toys that are motivating and interesting to them. Most of the toys that do interest them stimulate or calm specific sensory needs. That's what is so great about instruments - most of our children love music, and instruments allow them to make their own music. How does that help the teachers and children? Well, we can teach so many great skills using instruments as the teaching tools. Here are a few:
1. Following one-step directions: bang the drum, blow the flute, shake the tambourine
2. Imitation: the teacher taps the drumstick on the drum and the child imitates that action
3. Communication: for our children, communication usually begins when children are motivated to use their words to ask for things that they want - so they can learn to request music through words, sign language, or pictures
These instruments are so cute, with a child-friendly animal theme. Here's Ryan playing with one of the instruments during our interactive circle time:
Thanks to The Big Toy Book for allowing us to review one of your awesome products! The kids love their new instruments. The Big Toy Book also carries many other toys for children of all ages, including eco-friendly toys, bath toys, board games, baby dolls, action figures, and more! They also have a great blog with guest bloggers addressing a variety of topics. Additionally, they host regularly-scheduled Twitter parties with really awesome giveaways. This week's Twitter party features Toy Story 3!
A friend of mine's fiance works for the company that does the underwriting for Baby Genius products (among other things) and they have sent us a bunch of Baby Genius gifts for Jack. The videos are cute and educational and not obnoxious at all. They each come with an audio cd as well and we use them in the car (although I do mostly put on NPR and he probably just ignores the radio either way at this age). We have some of their toys, too, and Jack enjoys them. They are all just dressed up versions of classic toys - like those twisted wire things with wooden beads, etc. He enjoys them and they are great for dexterity, as well as exploratory play. He loved the play mat with different textures and noises and whatnot.
ReplyDeleteJennifer - That's awesome! These instruments were really cute and kid-friendly, so I'll definitely have to check out some more of the Baby Genius toys. The Big Toy Book has a really cute Baby Genius animal doctor kit for preschool-age kids. It'll be so fun when our little ones are ready for some real pretend play. Remember all the fun we used to have with Alicia's dress-up clothes?? :-)
ReplyDeleteOh my...I just had a flashback to a custody battle that resulted after Jamie and I were switched at birth. Not sure that had anything to do with dress up but holy crap...those were good times haha.
ReplyDeleteSo glad you liked the toy!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for the review of the site. The Big Toy Book will be opening it doors to their private sale site in just 1 week... Stay tuned! We're super excited