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

Special Needs Toys are separated into seven sub-categories to facilitate finding toys that address specific special needs and situations. All Special Needs Toys enhance child development, allowing children with diverse abilities to experience a variety of sensory feedback and stimulation. Distraction Toys also provide relief from stress and enhance a child's ability to cope.

Distraction Toys

Distraction Toys enable children to turn their attention away from stressful situations and immerse themselves in play. These toys invite children of all ages to escape and explore, enabling them to cope.

Meteor Storm is our most popular distraction toy. To activate a countinuously changing light display, a child must press and hold down the button. Letting go turns off the light. The child must focus on the act of play itself.

Now available in two sizes. The larger globe of the original prevents young children from sticking the light in their mouths while the mini, with its breakaway cord, can be worn around the neck for instant gratification.

Light Up Toys

Light Up Toys provide visual feedback and stimulation to both low vision and sighted children. Although lighting up is the primary function of these toys, all provide multi-sensory experiences.

Meteor Storm, with its press and hold switch, engages the sense of touch and invites children to experiment with on/off and to track the continuously changing color patterns of the spinning globe. This spinning causes the globe to vibrate, stimulating "feel" when the child places his hand on the globe, enabling blind children to enjoy Meteor Storm too.

Sound Toys

Sound Toys offer auditory feedback, enhance language and motor skills, develop spatial intelligence and understanding of cause and effect.

Sound Peg Puzzles are Sound Toys that provide varied visual, tactile, and auditory experiences and enhance motor and language skills. Fitting each puzzle piece in its proper place enhances motor development and rewards success with the appropriate sound. The pieces and their sounds enhance communication skills as the child identifies each piece and mimics the sound. Sharing the experience with an adult or older child provides further opportunity to hone cognitive and language skills, as the two engage in conversation about the puzzle and its components.

Sound & Light Toys

Sound & Light Toys offer both auditory and visual feedback. Although producing sound and light is the primary function of these toys, each requires the child to perform a task to elicit these responses, re-enforcing understanding of cause and effect and refining motor skills.

Both Baby Buzz'r and the newer Busy Bee Baby Buzz'r are multi-sensory toys that not only light-up and sound off but also vibrate and provide phthalate-free teethable textured surfaces. Blinking lights, music, and vibration activate individually by easy on/easy off push buttons, allowing the child to experiment and figure out what happens when he presses the buttons. Eventually he will discover that he can control the functions, choosing a favorite, then adding another and another as he explores possibilities. The visual, auditory, and vibratory responses are gentle, and the vibrations cycle on and off to keep the child engaged.

Texture Toys

Texture Toys provide oppportunities to use touch to explore similarities and differences and to learn words to describe these characterisitics. Developing tactile discrimination skills enriches sighted children and lays the foundation for blind children to learn braille.

Tangles, the ultimate universal playthings, feature a series of 90 degree curves interconnected to pivot 180 degrees at each joint. Just as a Tangle has no beginning and no end, there is no end to the pure delight children and adults alike experience when turning, twisting, bending and coiling a lightweight, portable Tangle. Playworks offers a variety of Tangles with texture, from the hard plastic Original with Texture to the Tangle Therapy with its soft, pliable coating and distinctive raised nodes. Their low impact motion relieves stress, strengthens finger muscles, and restores motion to joints. Teachers who use Tangles as a reward for children with autism report improved behavior: an increased calm and ability to cope with stressors that usually send them "over the edge" as well as increases in skill acquisition. Tangles invite manipulation and reward play with improved concentration and spatial relations and problem solving skills.

Oral-Motor Toys

Oral-Motor Toys aid in developing oral motor skills necessary for eating and speech. Tooting, humming, whistling, and blowing toys exercise facial and oral muscles and encourage deep breathing and controlled blowing.

Facial and oral massagers provide oral stimulation. Their low-intensity vibration calms and organizes sensory input. Jigglers, the only continuously "on" chewable oral facial massagers, turn on and off with a twist and come in two playful styles: a purple elephant and a green alligator.

Multi-Purpose Toys

The versatility of Multi-Purpose Toys facilitates motor, language, and cognitive development.

Bilibo is one such toy. Its unique shape and bright colors arouse curiosity and encourage experimentation. Children sit in and on, rock and spin, stand on top of, and hop and jump from one to another. One Bilibo can cradle a doll; a row of them can become a train or anything else a creative mind can imagine.