Playworks sells toys that invite play and enhance early childhood development [fun for all ages]

Other Toys covers a broad spectrum of play opportunities. From the self entertainment of solitary play to the social interaction of group play, Music, Games, Puzzles, Balls, and Puppets enhance early child development. Each offers multiple play possibilities and ways of learning and address a wide range of mental and physical abilities.

Music

Music benefits everyone. Children can create music alone or with others. Playing musical instruments enhances social skills, refines both large and small motor skills, fosters early vocal development, and increases spatial abilities.

Some instruments provide multiple play experiences. The wave drum, for example, comes with a mallet and responds to being drummed with a tom-tom beat. Hand drumming with fingers or open palms creates different sounds.

Holding and tilting the drum with both hands sends multi-colored beads scurrying around inside the drum. Experimenting with hand movements rewards musicians with a range of sound. Slow movement produces the whisper of a rippling tide and fast movement creates the crash of waves on rock.

Games & Puzzles

Through playing games children develop social skills, learn to take turns and play by the rules, to focus on what's happening and to plan ahead. Games provide opportunities to refine skills and learn new words and concepts.

With puzzles, children can play alone or cooperatively, developing spatial relationships, learning persistence, as piece by piece the picutre emerges, and experiencing the joy that comes with ultimately solving the puzzle. Puzzles also provide opportunities to start, stop, then return later to pursue the activity further.

For a game, deal tiles and invite players to reach inside the bag to "feel and find" corresponding shapes to complete a pair. This is one game that finds sighted and blind children on an even playing field.

Or use Feel & Find as 20 mini whole-object puzzles. Offer a beginner puzzler a matching tile and shape to fit together and take apart. Next offer two shapes and one tile. Once the child has successfully distinguished between two shapes, add another to keep the learning challenging and rewarding.

Balls

What does a child learn from playing with balls? Playing with a variety of balls, children experience different material properties, textures, weights, sizes, colors, and learn words to describe these. They engage in motor skills activities, alone and with others. All this from the most basic of toys. No batteries required.

For example, the light and easy to clutch Oball invites finger exploration and leads to understanding the concepts of grip and release. Ballino, a ball comprised of brightly painted maple disks, encourages two-handed grasping and rewards experimentation with soft clicking as the child manipulates the ball between her palms. Through such play children learn what happens as a result of their actions.

Puppets

Appealing to adults as well as children of all ages and with diverse abilities, puppets lend themselves to adult/child interaction and to individual and group play. Puppets stimulate language and cognitive development and encourage imaginative play. Used during story telling and music time, puppets increase attentiveness and participation.

Among early intervention specialists generally, and speech and language therapists particularly, Mice in Red Box is a favorite. Imagine a child's curiosity upon seeing the enticing red box. What's inside? Guess. The natural conversation that follows makes for a delightful learning experience.

With individual finger puppets, children learn to identify each one by name and to give each puppet its own personality. These realistic animal puppets also offer a variety of textures to explore, a feature appealing to many blind and visually impaired children.

Imaginative Play

Imaginative Play allows children to role play, creating their own worlds and letting their imaginations soar. Green Tea Set, named for it’s ecofriendly origins, is perfect for “brewing” pots of tea to serve family and friends, real and imaginary. These experiences prepare children for participating in family meal preparation and ultimately for independent living.

Scoots community vehicles allow children to re-create scenes from their neighborhoods and take on various roles in the community. A child can "drive" a fire truck and "fight" fires, "collect" recyclables, and "deliver" mail. With the addition of shoe boxes or blocks, she can build a town, complete with police station, fire house, and hospital.

My Train enhances fine motor development as the child couples and uncouples cars and allows the child to learn about trains and what goes by rail as he loads and unloads coal, logs, and cars. My Train is a perfect accompaniment to classic children's books about trains.

Here at Playworks we encourage parents to reject licensed products in favor of open ended ones that allow children to create their own story lines and adventures, not simply play out what they've seen on television. That's why we offer classic wooden trains and vehicles from Maple Landmark. We want children to fully develop their creative instincts.

Teaching & Learning Products

At Playworks we know the importance of play, and we offer a limited range of support products for parents and professionals. Among these are Play Packs, a series of six decks of cards offering skill-based games. Whether encouraging social interaction skills or gross and fine motor skills, parents and professionals will find a wealth of activities for small groups and large that use readily available supplies and easily adapt to a range of abilities.

Social Skills for Small Groups and for Large Groups, partner perfectly with All Children Have Different Eyes, to encourage sighted and visually impaired children to play together successfully. Special needs play becomes cooperative, inclusive play. At Playworks, we seek out children’s toys and games that foster interaction across differences in abilities.

Bridging differences also means learning more about different ways of communicating. Braille for the Sighted and Sign and ABC's further the introduction to Braille and sign language begun while playing with Braille & Sign Language Alphabet Blocks.

The Functional Uni4m makes working with a child easier, whatever the focus of the session, by keeping tools of the trade handy and easily accessible. Well organized teaching/learning experiences simply run more smoothly and produce more positive outcomes for everyone involved.