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Preschool (ages 3-5)
- Squigs: These toys are great for building finger and grip strength, and are fun to sort by color. They make a satisfying pop noise when they are removed.
- Dimpl: This is a great fidget for the car on those holiday road trips, and oddly satisfying even for adults.
- Suction Kupz: this is great for hiding little toys or cheerios in, or play a fun game of sorting on a vertical surface which builds shoulder strength and stability (foundational to handwriting down the road)
- Shape Sorter: this one has the shapes attached so you don't lose them under the couch, or this one is the classic version.
- Latch board: excellent to work on fine motor skills with curious little fingers. This is a slightly different version.
- Snug as a Bug: this board game works on counting, colors, and shapes.
- Monkey Around: we like connecting on a silly level with the kids with this game, this is good for even very young siblings
- Feed The Woozle: kids learn to slow down and control their movements in this game, and everyone loves the lemon flavored underwear chip. It has built in levels of difficulty so it can grow with your child.
- Stack Up!: everyone loves when the slapping hand knocks the blocks over this game where kids learn to control their force. This also has different options to increase or decrease the challenge, depending on the age of the children playing.
- BusyTown, Eye Found It!: this game is excellent to work on figure ground and visual scanning in a clutter field.
- Willy's Wiggly Web: this is my favorite game to build scissor skills. We haven't run out of web paper yet (whcih says something for how long it lasts!), but the rumor is you can contact them and they will send you a new pack for free.
- Roll and Play: excellent even for very very young siblings, this game encourages players to make different faces or find objects of a certain color- similar to Move and Groove.
Kindergarten (ages 5/6)
- Silly Street: this works on motor planning, and gets kids up and moving.
- Mermaid Island: every little girl has gone for this board from the inviting mermaid pictures on the cover. It's a cooperative game, so the group wins or loses all together.
- Zingo- all of our speech therapy friends love this game for pre and early readers.
- Race to the Treasure: similar concept to a lot of the cooperative games, but in this one the group is working towards keeping am ogre from stealing the treasure. Kids usually like making the decision of where to place their path independently, but an adult can encourage group discussion.
- Body sock: pushing and pulling against the lycra activates proprioceptive receptors, which means a calmer kid. We will throw a bunch of stuffed animals or ballpit balls in there too and do a "washing machine" for kids who are seeking a lot of input.
- Three Little Pigs: I love that this game has varying levels of challenge depending on where your kiddo is at, and it's for only one player so they can sit and do it themselves. It also has a cute Three Little Pigs book with no words so you can talk about the story together before playing.
- Trucky 3: what a great game for visual perceptual and visual spatial skill building. Kids have three trucks and blocks of various sizes and they have to figure out how to fill the trucks with the blocks given in each challenge. This is another game that grows with your child and is appropriate into early elementary school, and only has one player.
- Bunny Peek-a Boo: another great game to build visual skills, this one is simple with no reading required. The child must place the bunny and the different blocks/ boxes in the proper position to match the pictures. One play and cards get more challenges as you work through them.
- Monster Bowling: we like to use these cute little guys to work on core strength, by playing various capture or rescue games where they must be picked up with your feet! (sit on the edge of a chair or the floor and lift them with your feet)
- Sneaky, Snacky, Squirrel: the little squirrel tongs are so cute, kids don't realize they are working on building muscles for a tripod pencil grip.
- Honey Bee Tree: this is a re-imagined version of KerPlunk, but the bright colors and pretending you get stung by the bees when they fall keep kids engaged. I like to have them clean up using a tripod grasp, holding one little honeybee under their ring and pinky fingers.
First- Third Grade
- Ghost Hunters: this is a game you can play by yourself, making it good for a child who likes to push themselves with mini challenges. You place a card with ghosts on it, then must put the transparent plastic over, with the flashlight pointing at each ghost. This game has a wide variety of challenge levels, and I've successfully used it through upper elementary school.
- Blink: this fast paced game requires you to pay attention to see if you can place matching colors, number, or shapes into a middle pile and get rid of your cards the fastest.
- Monopoly Jr: we like to turn this into monopoly "extreme" where there are required core strengthening or bilateral exercises for each purchase. This is also a great game to work on money and counting skills.
- Thumbs Up: this fast paced game requires places to move colored rings over from their fingers to their thumb in the order indicated on the card. This is an excellent game to build dexterity and work on visual skills.
- Uno: this classic game can be paired with any sort of exercise or social challenge assigned to each color (for example, to play a red you must compliment someone, to play a green you must do 3 jumping jacks- some students like to build up credit before the game and do some exercises so they can play freely).
- Swish Jr: a fast paced matching card game, excellent for building visual skills. (this isn't on Amazon right now, but worth a look at your local toy store)
Upper Elementary
- Laser tag: I like this set because the laser hits the gun itself, so kids who are sensitive to tactile input don't need to wear scratchy or uncomfortable vests to play. This brand has held up to a lot of use over the last year, and I even ended up buying a second set because it was so popular at summer camp.
- Izzi Puzzle: great brain and visual challenge, and can be completed in many different ways so it never feels like you've completly mastered it. This is a simple black and white puzzle with only one rule: black must touch black and white much touch white, but surprisingly challenging to execute.
- Forbidden Island: this is the first and easiest of the three cooperative "Forbidden" games. Players work together to try and rescue 4 different ancient artifacts before the island sinks under the water. Everyone wins or loses together. Upper elementary students can do well with this game.
- Mole Rats in Space: another fun cooperative game, where players work together to get the mole rats out of the snake infested ship and safely away.
- Think Fun Gravity Maze and Circuit Maze: these are one player games where kids can challenge themselves to drop the marble or close the circuit and light up the lights. These are great to work on visual and spatial perception in a fun way. Kids like working their way up through the challenge cards.
- invisible ink pens: a favorite for writing secret messages (and secretly practicing handwriting)
- Road Block: help the cops block in the bad guy's getaway car in the single player puzzle challenge game.
- Roller Coaster Challenge: this game is super popular and is a great way to work on visual spatial challenges. Players get to build an actual working maze and send the marble car down to see if it works properly.
Middle School
- Forbidden Island: this is the first and easiest of the three cooperative "Forbidden" games. Players work together to try and rescue 4 different ancient artifacts before the island sinks under the water. Everyone wins or loses together. Upper elementary students can do well with middle school siblings in this game.
- Forbidden Desert: this is the second and medium level challenge of the three cooperative "Forbidden" games. Children work together to dig up the parts of their steampunk ship that has fallen from the sky- but beware- the sandstorm approaches!
- Forbidden Sky: the third and most difficult game, students love building the circuit and hearing the rocket make noises if they succeed.
- Laser tag: I like this set because the laser hits the gun itself, so kids who are sensitive to tactile input don't need to wear scratchy or uncomfortable vests to play. This brand has held up to a lot of use over the last year, and I even ended up buying a second set because it was so popular at summer camp.
- Multi Matrix: simple concept, move the next number or letter to the empty block, but excellent for building attention and visual scanning.
- Distraction: this is a fun game in groups where you have to try and memorize a series of random numbers while occasionally getting asked distracting questions like "What is your favorite food?" This can help work on short term memory in a playful way.
- Swish: a fast paced matching game that forces players to move cards mentally before they attempt to match manually. Excellent to work on visual skills.
- Think Fun Gravity Maze and Circuit Maze: these are one player games where kids can challenge themselves to drop the marble or close the circuit and light up the lights. These are great to work on visual and spatial perception in a fun way. Kids like working their way up through the challenge cards.
- invisible ink pens: a favorite for writing secret messages (and secretly practicing handwriting)
- Road Block: help the cops block in the bad guy's getaway car in the single player puzzle challenge game.
- Roller Coaster Challenge: this game is super popular and is a great way to work on visual spatial challenges. Players get to build an actual working maze and send the marble car down to see if it works properly.
High School
- Escape room gift card: check groupon or yelp for local deals.
- Pandemic: a more complicated cooperative game, where plays work together to stop a variety of diseases from spreading worldwide.
- Laser tag: It's always a hit.
- One Night Ultimate Werewolf: each round only takes 4 minutes so it's an easy game to fit in. Players draw a card and keep it secret while trying to convince other players they are NOT the werewolf. Interesting game to work on reading others' body language (since a lot of people are lying). This may be distressing if your child is on the spectrum, because it requires you to lie.