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PLAY Pen Article
My Other Brother Daryl
An ironic look at special education from TASH Newsletter, December 1987. "A Case For Teaching Functional Skills". A well-written cautionary tale that teachers should read.
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Why do they put everything in their mouths?
By: Renata Bursten, Dragonfly Staff
One of the earliest fine moter skill children develop is the skill of "sensation". Sensation is the skill we use to tell the difference between a quarter and a dime by touch without needing to look at the coins.
Cognitively young children have their best sensation descrimination in their mouths. By mouthing objects and then feeling them with their hands, children correlate the sensations from two different sensory input channels.
,This "sensory intgration" helps them to tune up the sensory apparatus in the hands. As the hands become more sensitive, children will need to put things in their mouths less and less.
During this oral stage it is important to offer many textured grasp and handle toys. Dragonfly offers a full collection of well designed and easy to handle toys of this type.
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PLAY Tip
Visual Tracking and the Switch Using Child: The Penguin Roller Coaster
The Penguin Roller Coaster is designed to help children track the movements of small objects. The penguins do a variety of movements - gliding up, down, around, and bumpy steps up. Each of these movements is tracked differently, making this toy very interesting to watch. This toy is most suitable for children who ONLY watch the toy as is fairly fragile.