Playworks sells toys that invite play and enhance development in children from birth through age five

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 development. Each offers multiple play possibilities and ways of learning. All 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 intelligence.

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 and learn to focus on what's happening and 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.

One product that lends itself to play as both game and puzzle is 3D Feel & Find. A durable cloth bag holds 20 wooden matching shapes and recessed tiles. With 10 geometric and 10 object shapes, play can focus on one or both categories, building spatial awareness and vocabulary.

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. She develops motor skills and learns to play alone or 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. A goal of Playworks is to encourage children with diverse abilities to play and 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. In fact, puppet play leads smoothly and logically into other activities: reading, singing, drawing, puzzle play, games, and adventurous outings.

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.

I recall my husband using a puppet with our young son to discuss an upcoming diagnostic procedure. The puppet, Geezer, had severe pain in his nose, his most prominent feature, and had to go to hospital for a CT scan to find out why. That puppet, which we have kept as a childhood treasure, saved the day, enabling apprehensive father and son to laugh and play while talking together about severe head pain and going to the hospital. A good investment if that was all that puppet ever did.