Grading Toys Up & Down: How to Make a Game Fit Your Child's Needs
By: Abby Gibb
How to make a game fit your child’s needs
We all have games, toys, and activities that may be too difficult or too easy for our children. At Hogg Therapy, we use games and toys to work on a large array of skills for all age levels; they are even some of our therapists' favorite tools for therapy! Need help modifying a game to fit the current skill level of your child? Keep reading for some ideas and examples!
If a game or toy is too advanced, there are many ways to grade the toy down. This means making the game simpler by taking away steps and rules. If the toy is too simple, there are often ways to grade up or incorporate the toy into more advanced play. Rules to live by: think outside of the box! Use colors, shapes, and the function of the toy to change the purpose of your play!
Examples:
Pop the Pig
To make this game harder:
- Incorporate all the official rules of the game and add more if you choose.
- Roll dice
- Pick the correct color piece
- Look at the number, feed the pig, then “pop” the pig’s head!
An extra step may be attaching gross motor movements to each color:
- If you pick purple, you must spin in a circle
- If you pick blue, you must sing your favorite song
- If you pick red, you must crawl around like your favorite animal
To make this game easier:
- Eliminate or shorten the steps. Instead of rolling the dice or looking at the numbers, practice taking turns “feeding” Mr. Pig!
- Use the pieces to target color/number identification: “Find the red pieces!” “Find the number 3!”
Uno
To make this game harder:
- Have your child deal the cards
- Use the color cards to discuss events/feelings from the day: When you play a green card, discuss what things make you happy! When you play a red card, discuss what things make you angry! A basic use of colors to ID emotions is as follows: Green>Happy, Blue>Sad, Yellow>Silly, Red>Angry.
- When a player lays down a color card, the first one to I-SPY something that's the same color gets to discard a card!
To make this game easier:
- If your child cannot hold the cards in their hand effectively, lay your cards down on the table in front of you
- Remove more complex cards (reverse, skip, etc.) and focus on matching colors.
There is always a way to make a toy or activity easier or harder, depending on interests and ability level of your child! Have a game that you're not sure how to grade up or down? Reach out to your child's therapist for some ideas! We love to share our knowledge and help families PLAY, LEARN, and ACHIEVE!
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