May Toy of the Month: See It & Sign It

 MAY 2012 TOY OF THE MONTH

See It & Sign It™

Written by: Joyce Lopez

In 2004, while working in product development for a new and upcoming toy company in Alameda, California, I had the opportunity to create a game that is very dear to my heart, “See It and Sign It – An Introduction to American Sign Language™.” 

Being raised by a mother, who not only immigrated to the United States alone, but is also deaf, I witnessed my mother’s life transform from one that offered very little communication and interaction to a life filled with a new way of communicating, new friends, and a new support system.  Sign language was responsible for opening up a new chapter in my mother’s life.  For me, the opportunity to share this beautiful language with others through a fun and engaging game was my focus.  I couldn’t have been more excited!  Bud Fraze, President of PlayAbility Toys, believed in this project and provided me with the support I needed to get this game out and, hopefully, change lives like my mother’s had been!

It was my observation that most people found it difficult to execute a sign correctly by simply following an illustration.  With this in mind, I decided to include a DVD with the game combining illustrations with live demonstrations to ensure proper execution of each sign.  It was my hope that this would make learning ASL easier!

Bud and I agreed that a successful Sign Language game would require the input and approval of the deaf community.  Fortunately, Bud was still working at Lawrence Livermore Lab and was able to secure a visitor’s pass for me to enter the premises and meet with several of their deaf employees.  It received unanimous approval!!! 

At that point, I knew my idea was worth seeing it to fruition.  I worked closely with Jennifer Goins, a deaf ASL teacher in the public school system in Livermore California, who reviewed and approved every illustration included with the game.  One common criteria dictated to me by the deaf community was the DVD had to be silent – absolutely no sound. Although most hearing people were convinced that sound would be critical to the DVD, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the silent DVD actually captured and held children’s attention better than other instructional DVD’s with sound. 

See It and Sign It™ was extremely well received by both the deaf community and the hearing world that, by popular demand, See It and Sign It™ Level II was developed andhas been on the market since 2010.

Autism Awareness Month

It is Autism Awareness Month. While still devastating to individuals, families and society in general, it is encouraging that a tremendous amount of research is going on in the field. In fact PUBMED.gov the NIH Library database lists 19,657 scholarly articles published on autism. Two relatively recent articles are highlighted here. The first is a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  This report discusses the incidence of autism. Here is their interpretation of the data:

“Interpretation: These data confirm that the estimated prevalence of ASDs identified in the ADDM network surveillance populations continues to increase. The extent to which these increases reflect better case ascertainment as a result of increases in awareness and access to services or true increases in prevalence of ASD symptoms is not known. ASDs continue to be an important public health concern in the United States, underscoring the need for continued resources to identify potential risk factors and to provide essential supports for persons with ASDs and their families. “ This is a link to the report:

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6103a1.htm?s_cid=ss6103a1_w

The second,  a study published a couple of weeks ago in the American Journal of Human Genetics and led by The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto and McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont. may help to explain why autism spectrum disorder affects four tim...es more boys than girls. The study results may also point to a future treatment for autism. Here is a link to a story covering the article: http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/04/12/sick-kids-study-could-shed-light-on-why-autism-affects-four-times-more-boys-than-girls/

We will continue to comment from time to time when we see scholarly articles about autism and indeed any of the conditions that affect children with special needs.

April Toy of the Month: Buddy Dog

 By Bud Fraze 

Founder and President

Playability Toys, LLC

In May of 2005, Joyce Lopez, one of our product developers, and I met with Diane Rogers at her home in Panther Valley, a suburb of Reno, Nevada. She and her partner Michele Monahan had modified their home to care for children from the Reno area who were considered to be too low functioning to be enrolled in school or who were abandoned by their caretakers. Some of the children had fetal alcohol syndrome and the others were children on the autism spectrum. We were amazed at how much these women had accomplished and how many children they were taking care of; it was truly inspiring. 

Diane asked us if we would create a replacement for a doll commonly used by therapists. That doll was used by therapists to engage children with cognitive disorders and those on the Autism Spectrum. Many children can be drawn out of the isolation they experience with the help of this doll. Diane explained that these dolls were hand made by a person in Florida and were usually in short supply. She requested that these attributes be key features in the design of the new "doll". They were as follows: 

1.  Large eyes to engage the child. 

2.  Tactile features on the hand and feet so that it could be used as a teaching tool. 

3.  A patch of Velcro that children on the autism spectrum could rub. 

4. A cover for the Velcro so that the therapist could "hide" it.

5.  Some soft hair or material that the child could feel. 

6.  A vibrating feature (if possible) to sooth the child. 

7.  Material that made noise but could be shut off or removed if it bothered the child. 

8.  A teething ring or something to provide oral stimulation.

We recorded these required attributes and then returned to the Bay Area. We held a design workshop shortly after returning. We had an artist sketch some concepts so that we could have a general starting place.

We were doing fairly well with the design until the question of "gender" surfaced. Would it be made a boy or a girl? Would it need to be gender neutral? We struggled with both of these questions for quite some time. We also were questioning the fact that, "were we just improving the existing doll, but in the end, were we just creating another "doll"?" 

The first iterations of the doll:

A therapist had remarked that many times children respond better to animals than people. We decided at this point to shift from a doll to a dog since it was agreed that children love puppies. In the ensuing process, we faxed pictures of the puppy back and forth from our office to the artist. We incorporated the features that Diane had communicated to us: 

l. Large eyes (that were sewn not buttons). 

2. A big smile (visual). 

3. Contrasting black and white material (visual). 

4. Tactile material on the paws (bumpy dots. Visual and tactile). 

5. Soft velvet floppy ears with tactile, contrasting material on the opposite side (same as #4). 

6. A tuft of short soft hair on the top of his head (tactile). 

7. A vibrating unit with the pull cord being his tail (soothing, engaging). 

8. A teething ring attached to the vibration cord (oral stimulation). 

9. A contrasting colored vest with stripes and dots (visual) that was crinkly (auditory) and removable (some children may not like crinkly sound). 

10. A Velcro patch that had a removable flap to hide it. (tactile) 

Here are some early sketches:

The greatest challenge for our artist was the eyes. Getting the correct size, not too small or too large was critical. It reminded us that designing toys for kids with special needs requires designing out of the box. After seeing the final sketches, they were perfect and we were off and away.

We then sent the sketches and detailed specifications to the factory for prototype samples.  When we received them, we sent two of them to Diane for her approval. Diane was thoroughly pleased with the dog. If my memory serves me correctly, the first unit had dots on the vest. Diane commented that there should be stripes instead seeing as some children see them better than dots and vice versa. 

We did not have an official name for the dog and after much discussion on potential names; we decided that every child needs a "buddy" so we settled on the name "Buddy Dog."

Bud Fraze 

March Toy of the Month: Fun with Abby & Alyssa

Fun with Abby and Alyssa ®,

An Introduction to Sign Language

By Don McNamara

This is the story of a grandfather venturing into a completely new area to try to make a positive difference in the lives of his two special needs granddaughters.

In June 2009, I was watching the planes depart Reagan National Airport from my apartment in Arlington, VA, and thinking about my career and personal life. I had spent nearly the past 30 years as a Special Agent within the U.S. Department of Defense. I recently returned from Iraq and meeting with agents there to discuss their operational needs and how I could help. For the past 2 years I lead an effort to organize several million documents stored in a dusty Government warehouse in Central New York. These documents involved the nearly $15 billion in cash the United States sent to Iraq to support the war effort. This amount of money attracted the efforts of criminals who saw this as an opportunity to get rich. My goal was to identify these criminals and help bring them to justice. We had initiated numerous cases around the world and were getting good results.

During my career I conducted and supervised criminal investigations both in the United States and abroad. These cases involved theft, corruption, bribery, accounting crimes, terrorism financing, and the illegal exportation of materials to Iran, North Korea and China. I was a first responder to the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centers. I combed through debris in lower Manhattan and on Staten Island. I’d taught self-defense and firearms for over 10 years. I had given and taken my share of lumps. I was a certified “tough guy”. However, nothing in my career had prepared me for the challenges in my personal life that had occurred over the past 2-½ years.

In January 2007, as we prepared for the February wedding of our son, Sean, my wife Regina suffered a cranial aneurism and died within hours. We had been married over 30 years and had just celebrated her 51st birthday. Sean’s fiancé had a child from a prior relationship, Alyssa, age 3. Five weeks after Regina’s tragic death, I became a father-in-law and grandfather on the same day. Due to medical issues, Alyssa is nonverbal, although she can hear. I noticed her difficulty in playing with hearing children who didn’t know sign language, as well as communicating with other members of our family.

In November 2007, my second granddaughter, Abigail was born. A few days after birth she was stricken by a virus that destroyed the motor control section of her brain. Her medical diagnosis is quadriplegia cerebral palsy. As time went on, it became clear that Abby, although she can hear, would be nonverbal like her sister Alyssa.

As I sat on my balcony watching the planes, I decided to do something to help the girls. I couldn’t alter their medical issues, but I thought perhaps I could alter how they interact with other children. I decided to write a series of books introducing American Sign Language (ASL) to all children so that they could communicate more effectively with nonverbal and deaf children. I decided to write these books even though I had almost no experience with ASL. I needed to learn ASL so I could communicate with my granddaughters. I purchased an ASL dictionary and several reference books and began teaching myself ASL.

After a couple of months, I called Liam Gooley, the son of a close friend, who had experience in graphics and illustrations. Liam and I worked together for the next 2 years to create the “Fun with Abby and Alyssa ®” books. In these books my granddaughters introduced ASL to early readers and preschoolers.

Each thematic book provides easy to follow illustrations and instructions for the various signs. The readers are encouraged to practice these signs with Abby and Alyssa. Each book also contains the ASL signs for the alphabet and numbers 1 through 10, as reinforcement exercises. The themes for the six books are: zoo animals, breakfast foods, colors, bedtime activities, school and family members. These topics provide a glimpse as to the variety of activities that can be introduced by the “Fun with Abby and Alyssa ®” books.

To this day Abby, Alyssa and I continue to learn sign language. The ability to effectively communicate adds to our relationship.My goal is to improve communication among all children. Every child wants to play with other children. There has to be a basic level of communication to enable them to interact effectively. I’m hoping the “Fun with Abby and Alyssa ®” books will provide that bridge in communication.

February Toy of the Month: Shape SENSEation

By Joyce Lopez, Product Development

Get 10% off Shape SENSEation all month long! Buy now!

During one of many discussions with Speech and Language Pathologist/Special Education Teacher, Marian Gericke, the topic of integrating toys and games found its way into our conversation. Marian agreed that there are many good matching toys on the market; unfortunately, most of the matching toys focus on one or two learning skills and do not offer a variety of matching and learning skills for kids, especially kids with special needs. Marian also explained that the majority of matching toys on the market are small or awkward to work with, making it difficult for some children to use them effectively.

Since Marian works with special needs kids, I asked her for a list of features that she would like to see incorporated into a matching toy:

+ Bright, high contrasting colors for visual stimulation

+ Shapes that are easy to identify

+ Multiple textures for tactile stimulation

+ Multiple patterns and contrasting colors for visual contrast and visual discrimination

+ Sound for auditory stimulation

+ Lightweight for kids with limited muscle strength

+ Large and soft shapes that make it easy for kids to grasp, hold, and manipulate

+ Suitable for individual play as well as group play

+ Simple

Equipped with Marian’s list, I set off to create the ultimate matching toy for young kids, especially kids with special needs.

+ I started with six basic shapes – Star, Circle, Crescent Moon, Heart, Square, and Triangle.

+ Thick, soft foam was used inside each of the shapes, making each piece fun to touch, easy to grasp, and easy to hold.

+ Each shape was then divided symmetrically, making each half easy to identify.

+ I added multiple tactile materials – velour, bumpy, smooth, corduroy – to each shape.

+ A distinctive rib design was added around the top and bottom borders of each shape making it easier for kids, especially for kids that are blind or kids with low vision, to identify the shapes in order to match them together.

+ High contrasting colors and patterns were incorporated into each shape making them easier for all kids especially kids with low vision to identify.

+ Velcro was added in between each of the symmetrically divided shapes making it fun and easy for kids to pull the shapes apart and match them back together. The Velcro also adds an interesting sound when the shapes were pulled apart, adding auditory stimulation to the play experience

Marian Gericke loves the final product, which we call Shape SENSEation. Because of its many features, Shape SENSEation offers parents, teachers, and therapists a variety of play ideas that promote physical, sensory, communicative and cognitive learning. Shape SENSEation also includes a handy carrying pouch that can be incorporated into group play activities.

January's Toy of the Month: Rib-It Ball

Get 10% off the Rib-Ball all month long! Buy now!

Rib-It-Ball is Playability Toys' first product. Ever wonder about it? It's no ordinary ball. It looks, sounds and feels very different than ordinary balls and here is why? Here's the story of the ball and our founder Bud Fraze.

The average person would not naturally connect aerospace design with special needs toys. One might ask what these two disciplines have in common. Spacecraft and special needs toys?

In 2001 Bud Fraze, President and Founder of Playability Toys was Launch Operations Manager for a satellite company and designing mainstream toys in his spare time with his friend Bill Bridge. Bill’s idea was to start an action toy company and he had recruited Bud to collaborate. Upon returning from overseas travel, Bud received a call from the mother of a child who was born with Bilateral Anophthalmia. The mother left a message stating that her 18 month old son had visually impairment and she was frustrated with the toys available on the market, specifically balls. She had heard that Bill and Bud were designing toys and asked that they look at designing a ball for her son, Jacob. A few days passed and the mother called again and this time she explained in detail what the requirements for the ball were. Requirements are something that design engineers work from. How large is the camera on the satellite, how long must it operate, what is its orbit and so on. She was very detailed in her requirements: it must be (a) lightweight (b) easy to grasp or hold (c) make noise when grabbed, dropped or tossed (d) it could not have any batteries or electronics (e) be able to roll but not roll away (f) bounce but not bounce out of his reach.

In Bud’s words. “When considering these requirements they seemed counterintuitive. How could it make noise without some power source such as a battery or electronics? Within a week the mother called me again and asked how the project was coming? I was a little taken aback because I wasn’t sure exactly how the ball could be designed, I was still processing all of this and had not anticipated that someone would challenge me with that sort of project. “I’m still thinking about the design”, I told her. The phone calls continued and weeks went by. I use SolidWorks, a computer aided design software, to model in 3D my aerospace work so I also used it to create the ideas that came to mind with the ball. Each concept would work in one area but not in another. I was becoming increasingly frustrated with this challenge but as with most engineers I couldn’t abandon the project; I just kept at it.

Bill and I had raced sailboats in San Francisco for many years and I remembered that the sail cloth used on spinnakers made lots of noise when stuffed into sail bags. That gave me an idea, maybe if the ball were made of that cloth it could produce some noise. As luck would have it there was a sail loft located in the same building and I knew the manager, Lynn. I went to the loft and asked Lynn if she could sew a prototype from sailcloth if I gave her a solid model, drawings and dimensions. “Sure!” was Lynn’s response. A few days later, Lynn brought the first prototype of the ball to me. It was light weight and almost seemed to float when it was tossed. When it bounced on the floor it made a soft noise and it didn’t roll away but simply rocked back and forth. The cloth ribs on the side made it easy to grasp and kept it from rolling away. I asked Lynn to make a few more of the balls so we could test them. After I was satisfied I called the mother and sent a couple of the balls to her. After a week she called me back and related how much Jacob enjoyed the ball.

I thought this was the end of the project and went back to other work. A few weeks later I received a call from a woman who worked in special needs. She explained to me that she had sent one of the balls to the Helen Keller Institute and if I would come back there for a meeting she would like to talk to me. She told me to bring some balls along but to make them with black, white and red cloth. I flew to New York and met her at the institute annex in Manhattan. She took me to a room with a half dozen children who had visual impairment. They were standing apart from each other at other activities. She then took one of the larger red, white and black Rib-It-Balls™ and tossed it into the room. The children immediately ran to the ball and started playing with it, laughing and yelling. “You see?” she said, “It works, they’re having fun.” I stood there at the doorway watching in silence. Trying to take it all into my consciousness and analyze what I was seeing sent my mind into overload. For me it was a defining moment. I realized that one event had done more to change my attitude about my designs than any spacecraft or aerospace project I had ever worked on. The Rib-It-Ball™ ball, in my mind, made more of a difference to people than any high tech project I had ever been involved. We contacted a manufacturer who could mass produce the ball and the rest is history.”

Bud still designs spacecraft but his “special passion” is to design toys for “special children”. Playability Toys will always be unique and tailored for the community they serve. Ideas for other toys continue to be submitted from the teachers and therapists involved in special needs. Without them we couldn’t do what we do.

To purchase special needs toys such as the Rib-It Ball, visit playabilitytoys.com.

Talking to Parents, Teachers, and Therapists About Toys for Children with Special Needs

Childhood development can be tricky to measure, as it doesn’t always align with chronological age. This can be especially true for children with special needs. But there are six play milestones that can be measured, and that children can tackle at their own pace: Shared Attention, Social Engagement, Two Way Interaction, Shared Problem Solving, Creative Thinking and Logical Thinking. Each stage builds upon the previous, allowing children to learn the fundamentals, and apply them to specific situations with greater understanding. Toys can help to promote play and children will be more engaged when the features of the toy match the characteristics of the stage. 

The first stage, Shared Attention, encourages sensory exploration, sensory experience and physical proximity. The focus is to allow for two or more children to interact and understand physical boundaries as well as gain exposure to different sensations. The second, Social Engagement, emphasizes person-to-person connection and a shared experience. The goal in this stage is to provide the basics in interaction between two people, like waving or hugging. Third, Two Way Interaction, is a stage similar to social engagement, but also encourages the child to take initiative in a conversation and reciprocate actions, which could be as simple as rolling a ball back and forth.

Next is Shared Problem Solving, where children engage in longer periods of shared attention and handle complex emotional exchanges. In this stage they are also encouraged to seek and receive help. This stage includes toys like building blocks or puzzles, anything that can be put together and takes some level of concentration. The fifth stage is Creative Thinking, where children begin to use their imagination and think symbolically. This can begin as imitation of parents or elders and evolve into less realistic themes and more conceptual. 

The last stage, Logical Thinking, is when children begin to connect ideas to gradually make a story, question their surroundings and, when they receive answers, deepen their understanding of the world around them. This post was based on an article in the August 2011 newsletter from the American Specialty Toy Retailing Association. Visit astratoy.org for more information on specialty toy retailers and the organization itself.

To purchase special needs toys to incorporate into your child's play, visit playabilitytoys.com.