OT Toys worth playing with and another give-away from Toy Kingdom

Little Miss has been playing with three OT Toys from the Toy Kingdom OT campaign.
Toy Kingdom have identified a few guidelines on choosing OT toys, and also have compiled a list of OT toys that's available in their stores across South Africa. I have shared previously about how I have changed my mind completely about occupational therapy, and that I think it has worth for all children. Especially when they start with school!

It makes a lot of sense to have creative toys in the home. Dana Katz, a registered occupational therapist, believes that moderation and responsible use is key when talking about too much screen time for children. To counter excessive screen time children of all ages should be playing with traditional toys and play actively and independently inside and outside.

Little Miss chose the following from the OT toys available at Toy Kingdom. We based our selection on her age, and what she can use for a couple of years!

ZOOB

Zoob building set

The building set pieces are able to move after the kids have put them together. Children are able to play and manipulate their creations!

Little Miss was so excited when we got this, because she knows it already from school. She said she wanted to kiss it five times! (Definitely worth buying it!)

Anti-Virus from Smart Games

This IQ building set develops logical thinking skills, encourages strategic planning. It also develops visual and spatial perception. The game has 60 challenges on 5 levels.

Little Miss enjoys it and I know we are going to use for quite a while!

Grammar Wise from Chalk & Chuckles

We selected Grammar Wise from the Chalk and Chuckles series. It claims to exercise your colour and language muscles at the same time.

As Little Miss's home language is not English, this is still a bit advanced for her. But she is beginning to read English at school, and we are definitely going to use this in future!

She made a few good choices!

Give-away

There is another R750 gift voucher up for grabs for one reader of this blog. 

It is unfortunately only open to South African readers.

The Rafflecopter starts on 26 April, and ends on 3 May at 12 am.
(The list of OT Toys from Toy Kingdom is saved in Google Drive.)

You are welcome to submit all the  Rafflecopter prompts for more entries, but one prompt will also give you an entry. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post.

We got R1500 to spend on OT toys at Toy Kingdom. 

iPad learning for special needs #iPadLearningZA

I learn something new each time I attend a workshop with regards the use of iPads and learning.

Karen Hart, an iPad Facilitator at Think Ahead, gave a workshop on Wednesday at the iStore on Sandton Drive about app solutions for special needs.

Karen Hart

iPad is the best for remedial teaching, because it has so many inbuilt features! 

(I believe it to be true, because I haven't seen other tablets with the same features!)

The Core Group is responsible for the following:

Local support for educators, parents and learners

• Extensive teacher training

• Curriculum integration

• Infrastructure and technical planning and support

• Parent and learner support (at every single iStore)

        Check out the iParent website for workshops and resources.

• Community of best practise

• International keynote speakers

App solutions for special needs:

Karen Hart:

Dysphasia

A child who can type, but not write.

He will type on the Notability app, and mail it back to the teacher. They could both scan their learning material, and mail it back to each other.

Apps: 

Notability

HD Scanner

Dyslexia

Solutions:

- Maths - Talking Scientific Calculator

- Improving character recognition  - Dyslexia Quest

- Zoom - a built-in function to enlarge text - 200 to 500%

- Speak selection - built-in function to read text aloud

Auditory learning

Struggling learning text documents

- Use in-built voice memo (or something like QuickVoice?) to record his summarized work 

- Memos can be shared via email or iTunes or on iOs devices (sent to iPod)

- The student listens to his summarized work

- App: Text Grabber to convert from image into text file

- In-built Speak Auto-Text (with Accessibility function) can be used here as well

Low Vision and Blind

In-built settings in Accessibility: (first place to change settings for visually or auditory challenged people)

- Inverted colours - black background with white text / with orange and purple

- Zoom function

- Voice-over > speaks every single version on screen

- Flexy: works with qwerty keyboard (chosen app) > builds up dictionary of your own words. Train it and create predictive text. Flexy speaks the iPad to you. 

- Google Maps - direct you step by step

Hard of hearing

This is especially a challenge in the South African context. (There are no sign language apps).

Apps:

Book Creator 
- Can be used to create own manuals and videos for learning.

- Custom creation of visual dictionary

- The books are uploaded onto iBooks

- iMovie (or can also use the normal video function on the iPad)

With iMovie there is an option to make your own movie or use the trailer function for                     instant themes.

In-built features:
- Mono audio on iPad > can customize what level of sound go to ear

- FaceTime > smooth communication

- Camera for use in visual learning and teaching

- The Accessibility feature can be accessed by a triple click at the bottom.

- Voice over - Change rate of speech that iPad speaks with Rotor function (twisting                               motion swipe up or down with three fingers
- Speak Selection (Choose voices)

We were shown how easy it is to use Book Creator and to incorporate video, picture and sounds. 

I have posted before about Book Creator and how great it is for learning and fun. 

Book Creator has also come up again and again as one of THE apps to use with regards learning and teaching. Specific books can be created for specific needs, and children can use this very successfully in their own learning and projects at school. With one app you are able to create many different solutions!

I will do another post about Autism and some of the suggested apps by Elschen Kluge next week.

Related posts:

- iPads for teachers in the primary classroom - Tal Slome

- "Connecting to the past, delivering the future" - with iPads in the classroom by Joe Moretti

- Choosing iPads for your school - Fraser Speirs