Our switch adapted toys

about us

Our story
The concept of adaptivePlay was envisioned and launched by two young professionals--a special education specialist and an engineer-- while taking a drive down California's beautiful coast. Both were inspired by the power of using Play as a therapy strategy to enhance physical, cognitive and socio-emotional skills in children with special needs. The founders of adaptivePlay bring their expertise and passion to expand playful experiences to all children. Once, our toys (purchased brand new) are carefully selected to bring specific benefits to children with special needs, we customize them to make them special needs friendly (for example, switch-assisted toys).

Our mission
1. Bring Play to everyone!
2. Create a stronger link between Play and Therapy
3. Raise awareness within the toy industry to encourage toy manufacturer to develop products that are inclusive of children with special needs.

Our promise:
Our store aims to offer you the most pleasant shopping experience. We sell the finest merchandise in our branch at prices you won't find anywhere else, and - most important - we value our customers. Our goal is to meet YOUR requirements through our commitment to the quality of our products and customer service.

Who could use switch adapted toys?

Children with special needs who have limited fine motor skills, range of motion, and strength cannot operate traditional toy switches
The toy industry does not offer many toys for children with special needs, causing many children not to be exposed to the power of Play
Some children with visual impairments have trouble maintaining visual focus on objects/people
Families of children with special needs are not well equipped to continue therapy when the therapist is not present

What are switch-adapted toys?
Toys can be adapted so that a much larger switch (similar to Ablenet's Jelly Bean Switch) can be plugged into the toy and become the toy's new switch. Now it is much easier for the child to hit/push the larger switch to interact with the toy. There are a couple of ways to adapt toys - interrupting the batteries or interrupting the switch directly. You can only interrupt batteries for more boring toys that only have continuous ON/OFF modes (for example, a doggy that keep barking until you switch it off). At adaptivePlay, we try to adapt cooler interactive toys, and to do so, we need to interrupt the switch of the toy, which is much more complicated, but as a result you can adapt toys that are more exciting to play with. We can adapt more complex toys because we have a robotics engineer from UC Berkeley on staff and he is always interested in pushing the envelope to adapt more complex and cooler toys. Interactive switch adapted toys are much more effective at improving children's understanding of cause and effect (plus they have much more fun!).

How can switch-adapted toys be used?

During therapy sessions (therapists can design activities around the toy to work on specific skills)
At home, family members can use the toys as a way to continue therapy when therapist is not present
For fun...let's not forget these are kids, everyone deserves to have fun!

Benefits of switch-adapted toys

Improve strength, fine motor skills, visual focus, and range of motion
Cause and effect
Sense of control over environment
Playful approach to therapy
Play and fun (and the many implications that come from that)

What’s different about adaptivePlay?

The vast majority of our toys were adapted by adapting the switch, so they toys are much more interactive
Toys that kids love (Famous cartoon characters, Sesame Street, Action figures, etc)
All products on our website have a video clip showing the toy in action so that parents know how engaging each toy is

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Our switch adapted toys

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