Top Toy Picks For Your Special Needs Child

Shopping for toys for my kids is always a fun time. I love walking through the toy store and looking for toys that I think my kids might like. As a mom of a special needs child, I tend to look at toys a little differently than some parents. Like any mom, I’m looking for tiny pieces that he could choke on and for general all-around toy safety. But, I’m also looking at the toys to see what kind of learning and therapy opportunities they present as well. I want my child to love his toys. And if I can find a toy he loves that also let me work with him on some skills, then sign me up! I thought it would be nice to share my top toy picks for your special needs child and how I use those toys with my children.

I want you to know I haven’t just gone and randomly picked out these toys and put links in this post. We personally own every one of these toys (or we will after Christmas this year!). We have played with them and tried them out and I wouldn’t recommend them if I didn’t think they were great. And these toys are great for ANY child, not just special needs children.

A toy is still a toy…

Also, I don’t want it to sound like our house is full of toys that can only be used to work on therapy skills with our children. All of these toys are still just super fun toys to have, whether your child has ANY special needs or is typically developing. These toy picks offer wonderful opportunities to interact and learn for all children. I’ve also added on how you can use each type of toy to further help your child’s learning and development.

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#1 – “Cause and Effect” Toys

Why I Love Them:

I love “Cause and Effect” toys. It shows your child a sequence of events like “if I do this… then this happens.” It shows the connection between an action and the resulting effect or consequence. For example, I hit the ball with the hammer, the ball goes through the maze, and hits the bell at the end making a fun noise.

Why the kids love them:

These toys are usually really fun! There is generally a fun thing that happens when you play with them. They will get a loud noise or a fun flash of lights or something will pop out of the toy. My kids LOVE this kind of toy.

Therapy/Learning Skills for “Cause and Effect” toys:

• Color, shape, object labeling and learning
• Stop/Go language, Ready-Set-Go launguage
• “First this, then this” terminology
• Counting to start, counting the number of items
• Comparisons: Fast/Slow, Back/Forth, Up/Down, Over/Under
• Hand/Eye Coordination

#2 – Color Sorting Toys

Why I love them:

I love every one of the toys I’ve listed here. I love that they are cute and fun and make learning colors more fun. There’s a little something for everyone here. No matter how you play, there’s a lot of learning opportunities with any of these choices. There are several of these options with SMALL pieces. So just be alert to that fact. Most of these toys I keep up and put away and bring them out when we can play together.

Why the kids love these:

My little guy enjoys the tweezers and tongs to pick up the little items to be sorted. My older son likes to organize and arrange the pieces by color. These are all a win for everyone. All of the toys are fun colors and they really enjoy looking at them too.

Therapy/Learning Skills for Color Sorting toys:

• Color labeling, matching and learning
• Counting
• Comparisons: Big/Small
• Comparisons: Fast/Slow, Back/Forth, Up/Down
• Fine Motor skills with small pieces
• Patterning
• Hand-eye coordination
• Sorting
• Early Math Skills
• Imaginative Play

#3 – Shape Learning Toys

Why I Love Them:

All of these toys are super fun ways to learn about shapes. It makes the learning more fun, and we are playing along and a lot of times the kids have no idea I’m making them pick out and match shapes. I think when you find the right toy it makes learning fun for your kids.

Why the kids love them:

These are all just fun and bright colored toys. The kids love to play with them, arrange them, pull them apart and put them back together, etc. They think they are just playing along and having fun with their toys, and really they are learning the entire time.

Therapy Skills for Shape Toys

• Color labeling, matching, and identification
• Shape matching, labeling, and identification
• Counting
• Comparisons: Fast/Slow, Back/Forth, Up/Down, Big/Small
• Fine Motor skills with small pieces and pull apart pieces
• Patterning
• Hand-eye coordination
• Sorting
• Imaginative Play

#4 – Must-Have Puzzles

Why We Love These Puzzles

My kids have done a LOT of puzzles. These are the favorites that they go back to each time they get to choose a puzzle. These are all fun, colorful and a little different than just your average puzzle.

Different Approaches to Puzzle Play:

• Put the pieces in a sensory bin and have your child find the pieces and THEN put them in the puzzle, like here on busytoddler.com.
• Play with the pieces – No need to put them in the puzzle at all. You can just talk about all the pieces and use them with other toys. I.e. If you have a barnyard puzzle, use those pieces in your play barn.
• Mix the pieces of two puzzles together in a box, so your child has to decide if the piece even goes with the puzzle they are working on.
• Take the pieces out instead of putting them in, especially if they aren’t a big fan of puzzles. This always helps my kids get warmed up to the puzzle playing.

Therapy Skills for Puzzles:

• Color labeling, matching, and identification
• Shape matching, labeling, and identification
• Fine Motor skills with small pieces and pull apart pieces
• Hand-eye coordination
• Sorting
• Problem Solving Skills
• Patience (puzzles take time!)

#5 – Counting Toys

Why I Love Them:

I love all these toys that specifically let me focus on counting skills. They have many other ways to play as well, but these are at least centered around counting skills.

Why My Kids Love Them:

My kids love all these because they are fun toys. They are fun to play with and are cute to look at. They have lots of fun pieces that can be carried across many other areas of play too.

Therapy Skills for Counting Toys

• Color labeling, matching and learning
• Counting
• Comparisons: Fast/Slow, Back/Forth, Up/Down, Big/Small
• Fine Motor skills with small pieces
• Patterning
• Hand-eye coordination
• Sorting
• Early Math Skills

# 6 – Must Have Books

These books are all different than your average storybook. This list is more of a “Look and Point” and “Look and Find” kind of list I struggle to get my kids to sit and listen to a story. And while we do still have time that we read storybooks, I find they engage in these books much more easily and attend to them for much longer. And it gives TONS of opportunities to talk about each picture.

Suggestions for Looking At These Books With Your Kids:

• Object/Picture labeling
• Color/Shape recognition
• Letter/Number recognition
• Counting (how many cars do you see? How many people are on the boat?)
• Imaginative Thinking (What do you think they are going to buy at the store? I wonder what Elmo is going to eat for his snack? Etc.)
• Search and Find (Where’s the apple? Find the firetruck.)

#7 – Fine Motor Toys

Fine motor skills are crazy important for your child. It’s essentially your child learning to really use their hands. And through play toys that help them strengthen their skills and muscles, it will lead them to be able to perform life skills easier like buttoning a shirt, tying their shoes, holding a pencil and writing and the list goes on and on.

Therapy Skills for Fine Motor Toys:

• Fine Motor skills with small pieces
• Color labeling, matching, and learning
• Counting
• Patience – lots of these toys take time to finish!
• Patterning
• Hand-eye coordination
• Sorting
• Visual Perception Skills

#8 – Gross Motor Toys

Gross motor play is also wickedly important for your child. It’s the opposite of the fine motor skills. Gross motor skills are large muscle groups working together. It’s about your child learning some coordination with their movements and to learn to plan ahead for their movements as well.

Gross motor toys are truly some of my kids’ favorite toys. I pull a few different ones out each week and let them play as much as they want with them. It gets in a lot of movement and I am constantly amazed by how much this has helped our oldest son with his coordination and muscle/movement planning.

Therapy Skills for Fine Motor Toys:

• Strength
• Balance
• Movement Coordination
• Core Strength
• Reaction Times
• Motor Planning
• Jump, Stretch, Climb
• Integrate with Other therapy activities – (For example, use the scooter board and put all the puzzle pieces on one side of the room, scoot over to get the piece, scoot back and put the piece in the puzzle. Repeat until done.)

#9 – Fidget & Sensory Toys

Sometimes your child just needs to have a toy to help them calm down or be distracted in a stressful situation. These toys are my go-to’s for just that situation. These toys are soothing in different ways. See which one best matches up for you child!

Therapy Skills for Fidget and Sensory Toys:

• Allows time for calming down – watch the water move or the beads fall down the shaker stick
• Soothing Toys – squeeze and stretch toys
• Distractions for doctor’s office or busy store

#10 – Imaginative Play Toys

Imaginative play is hugely important in your child’s development. It offers SO many different learning opportunities for your child.

Therapy Skills for Imaginative Play Toys:

• Cooperative Play
• Emotional Skills
• Taking Turns
• Problem Solving
• Social Skills
• Sharing
• Identify with adult world (cooking, cleaning, taking care of children)

#11 – Art Project Supplies

Arts and crafts time may not always be the most preferred activity for your special needs child. However, with these art supplies, you may be able to get your child more engaged in art time. These are all different ways your child can explore painting and coloring without using the normal crayons and finger paint.

How To Level Up Your Art Projects

To add an extra level of learning to your art projects, make it about something you’ve been talking about. Read a book about pumpkins, play a pumpkin game, and then find a pumpkin that you can color or paint together. Try to tie it all together to add to the learning fun for your child. It’s all good to give them a blank page to color or paint sometimes too, but take every opportunity you can to add in a little more learning!

#12 – Building Toys

What I Love About Building Toys

I love everything about building toys. They can literally be made into almost anything with just a little imagination. It’s great time for you and your child to work together on a project. And it helps to teach them about how things work and how to build things.

Therapy Skills for Building Toys:

• Building skills
• Color labeling, matching, and learning
• Counting
• Comparisons: Under/Over, In front of/Behind, High/Low
• Fine Motor skills with small pieces
• Patterning
• Hand-eye coordination
• Sorting
• Planning Skills
• Coordination

#13 – Matching Games

Why I love Matching Games:

Matching games are great to work on with your kids. They are a good turn taking game for them to play with you and it helps their brains develop all kinds of skills. Plus, it’s super fun!

Therapy Skills for Matching Toys:

• Short term memory learning
• Attention to detail
• Similarities/Differences
• Opportunity for color, shape, number talk
• Object Identification
• Categories of Items (group cards after done by car, foods, toys, etc)
• Promotes Turn Taking/Sharing the game
• Concentration

#14 – Just Super Fun Toys

Sometimes you just need a super fun toy… just because it’s super fun. All these choices have any number of therapy related potential. But they are also just crazy fun for the kids to play with. These are easily some of the most favorite toys in my entire house.

Wrap Up – Top Toy Picks for Your Special Needs Child

To sum up, any toy can be used as a learning opportunity. But, there are a lot of toys that will help with multiple skills at the same time. I like to get the most bang for my buck, so I like toys that combine many skills into one simple toy. I’ve suggested a LOT of toys for you today. I hope that you find some that you think your child will enjoy! You may even have gotten some good gift ideas out of it! The holidays are coming!

The best way to teach your child (special needs or not) is letting them enjoy toys in a fun environment. Learning time with your child is certainly precious time and should be spent with fun toys all around! Pick a few of these toys and get them for your child and get to learning with your child! Just keep trying new ways to teach your children and just keep shuffling!

Related Posts – If you Like THis post, then try these:

• Dear Supermom – My Friend Is A Special Needs Mom
• Preventing Summer Learning Loss
• How to Enjoy Going Out To Eat With Toddlers
• To The Special Needs Mom In The Therapy Waiting Room

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