Every holiday season the number one question we get as therapists is, 'what can I get my child for the holidays to support the skills they work on here?' While it might be phrased differently from parent to parent, during the holiday season we see an overwhelming desire for family members to both get a child something that will fill them with joy and also provide a little therapeutic benefit. While the real answer depends entirely on your child and their needs, below you'll find 10 of our therapist's favorite answers for any child:

1. A toy microphone - Often found in the party isle, toy plastic microphones that slightly change your voice are good for endless hours of entertainment. Because of their larger size, younger kids tend to hold them with both hands, which can be great if your child is working on using both hands, and bringing them to midline. They also encourage lots of vocalization, repeating, imitation of sound, and turn taking because we all get a kick out of the altered sound. And don't forget all the playgrounds and obstacle courses your child can complete to get their gross motor practice to retrieve the sacred microphone.
2. Hippity Hop - these do a great job integrating skills like dynamic balance and grasp and provide a tone of sensory input and endurance training.
3. Bubbles - These are bit harder to get your hands on in the winter, but easily made at home in a pinch. Practicing blowing the bubbles helps kids with oral motor strength, coordination, and breath support. And believe it or not, can encourage them to sit up straighter. Once your child is done trying to blow the bubbles themselves, don't forget all the great sensory fun they can have popping them and the practice they can get stomping and jumping on them as they land on the ground.
4. Mr. Potato Head - If you are working on hand strength and fine motor skills, you'll get a lot out of assembling, disassembling, and re-assembling him an infinite number of ways. But don't forget to talk about all the silly combinations you come up with. And as a toy with multiple pieces, there's no reason you can't set up a scavenger hunt throughout
5. Stacking cups - While they can be used to encourage reception for gross motor skills, stacking and re-nesting them can be a great way to learn numbers, ordinal position and the concept of larger and smaller in addition to the fine motor manipulation.
6. Hula Hoop - This is a great total body coordination task and not to mention a work out when it comes to hula hooping contests, but there's so much more you can do with one of these. If you are working on hand control and different grasp, learning to throw it with a back spin so it rolls back to you is always fun and it's a great intermediate thing to hold onto when bridging the gap between walking with a push toy or hand held and independent steps. But my favorite use of a hula-hoop by far is as a target when working on throwing skills.
7. Swing - While this may be a little less practical for some, if you have a way to suspend it, swings are a great toy to have access to. First, learning to pump and self propel can be a motivating and challenging gross motor skill for many school aged kids. But beyond that, they produce a lot of vestibular input that can be great for kids with sensory needs and they are an amazing dynamic surface when learning dynamic balance skills and when attempting to activate the postural control system for improved articulation.
8. Balance Bike - This may be one of our newest favorite toys as we just got a few of these at the clinic. They're fun, motivating, and provide a lot of sensory feedback. They are a great way to work on the idea of putting your feet down to prevent falling before learning to ride a 2 wheeler but also provide opportunities to work on balance, grasp, and coordination well before a child ready to think about riding a bike. They provide one direction instability (side to side) while they provide forward backward support and something to hold onto with learning about using momentum to maintain balance, and learning about lateral weight shifting. On a side note, if your child is working on pre bike riding development, they'll need your help and supervision. We recommend you talk to your child's therapist on specific applications to their development prior to trying this at home.
9. Jenga - Jenga is a great fine motor stacking game that helps kids learn about balance, cause and effect, and precision in fine motor movements. But if you hang out with the team at Starfish Therapies, you know we hardly ever use it this one as intended. This is our favorite game for kids that need to know what's next and how many times they need to do something. Here's how it works, each block has a shape drawn on it in a variety of colors. We then make a chart with activities that correlate to each color and instructions that correlate to each shape like the number of times they'll do something.
10. Easel - Not only do we like that they motivate kids to stand while using them, but they mix things up when working on handwriting skills, are a great way to set a schedule or expectations for a day, and are a mess friendly surface for art projects.