Mobito Go!!!

Andrew recently outgrew the small big wheel style tricycle that he has had since he was a preschooler. He was very sad that he could no longer use his bike since it is something that he enjoys doing tremendously. We know that he cannot use a regular bike because of lack of balance and lack of the ability to catch himself. It just plain isn't safe. Plus, he has to have his feet strapped in so that he can pedal. Special needs bikes are RIDICULOUSLY expensive and he is too small for the adaptive kits that you can buy online. So, the search for the perfect "bike" was on.

After researching like crazy, talking to other parents, and discussing it with his PT, we decided on the Mobito tricycle. It is a low to the ground tricycle and comes in a variety of colors and sizes. It is meant for typical kids and looks super cool, which is something that is very important for my self-conscience 8-year old. It EVEN has flame stickers on it (it's the little things that count).

The huge box was delivered to our house and our son was incredibly excited as he waited for Daddy to get home from work to put it together. Assembly was fairly smooth and took about an hour or so, even with Andrew "helping." We put Andrew on it, strapped his feet in, and away he went!

Andrew LOVES his new bike. It is easy enough for him to pedal with his reduced leg strength and is easy for him to turn and stop. The turning radius is wide, so there has been some learning that he has had to do. He does occasionally get stuck because he forgets that he can't pedal backward like he could on his other tricycle (it is like a traditional bike that coasts when the pedals are stopped or pushed backward). Most excitingly is that he can finally ride a bike around, including riding in the street (under supervision of course) and up the sidewalks in our neighborhood.

We have had the bike for about 2 months now and Andrew is still in love with it. He works with his PT on it and also rides it fairly regularly with me. Where he used to get stuck on even the smallest incline, he can now ride up large hills and driveways. Where he used to only be able to go up about 5 houses away from our house (up a fairly steep hill), he just yesterday rode .6 miles to the entrance of our community. He is working hard at it and loves that he has a way to get further distances. He is also working out those legs and gaining some much needed muscle.

I had looked at other tricycles that are similar in style to this one, but I have read that they are all much harder to pedal and control. Also, they are only slightly cheaper and are a lot more cheaply made. This one is easy to pedal and I can tell it will last a long time. It has real bike tires on it (the back ones are 12 inch, the front is 16 inch) that can be inflated and even replaced if need be. It isn't cheap, but it is a whole lot cheaper than the special needs trikes we had been looking at.

Overall, this is a great bike for a special needs child who has reduced strength or balance issues. It still requires them to do the pedaling and navigation on their own, so it would not be good for a child who is not capable of doing that. There is no parent handle. Luckily, we no longer really need that, but the first couple of weeks I was wishing that it had every time that he got stuck. Now, he rarely gets stuck and rarely needs help, so it is no longer an issue.

Great Special Needs Gift Ideas!

Looking for a game for your special need kid that will help with a skill that you are working on? A friend (and Occupational therapist) has a blog where she has listed some great ideas for gifts. She has some for visual discrimination and some for auditory processing. I think many of these are going to be big hits with my kids and only I will know that we are working on some very important skills. They are  "typical" kids games, not games made specifically for special needs kids, which is extremely important for my self-conscience 8 year olds. Check them out!!

Embrace Your Chaos: 101 Ways to Play (#25): Toys and Games to Build Auditory Processing Skills

Embrace Your Chaos: A Few of My Favorite Things….Holiday Gift Ideas

101 Ways to Play: #23 Toys and Games to Build Visual Perceptual Skills

Honestly, I cannot say enough positive things about this OT. She was great with my boys in the short time that they saw her and she always came up with such creative ideas for them. Follow her blog... it's amazing and I can't tell you how many ideas I have gotten from it.

I will also be compiling a list of toys that I have found to be very useful with teaching my boys new skills as they have grown up. Check back soon for part 2 of "Great Special Needs Gift Ideas!"

Legos Education (part 2)

For the boys' birthday, we got them another set from the Legos education line.  This one is a construction set that is a precursor to their more advanced robotics lines. We purchased it on 50% off clearance at the same time as the math set with an understanding that it was what the boys were getting for their birthday. All I have to say is WOW these sets are AWESOME and if I see anymore of these things on clearance, I am definitely going to pick them up.

We broke open this set the day after their birthday when we had nothing else really planned for the day. All three kids spent 3 hours playing with these. They built things, took them apart and built new things. There were enough for 2 kids easily, but with 3, there were some fights over certain parts.

The great thing is that they screw together so that they don't come apart easily. It works on their fine motor skills and makes it super easy for them to build what they want. My boys really love trucks. Andrew was able to build an excavator and put tracks on them, just like he always wanted to with regular Legos, but was unable to with his fine motor limitations. This set comes with idea cards if you want your kids to use them, but my kids preferred to just build on their own.

Anyway, here are their Lego creations.

Not sure what this is supposed to be.
She is my "creative" child.

It's a rescue helicopter!!

It's a tracked giant excavator!!

Oh... and if you are curious about how big the box is, this should give you an idea. It's big enough for a small 8 year old to fit in... sorta. 

LEGOS Education?? YES!

On a recent trip to our local LEGO store, there was a very knowledgeable sales person demonstrating a few sets from LEGO Education line. My first thought was, "LEGOs has an educational line?" The second thought was, "AWESOME! I have a little boy who loves LEGOs but hates a lot of traditional approaches to math."

One of the sets that was being demonstrated was the LEGO Duplo Numbers and Mosaics set. It has tiles that attach to 4 included Duplo plates and can be used for a variety of math concepts from number recognition all the way to simple division. There are also shape tiles (similar to tangrams) and design cards to work on geometry skills and visual motor skills. I just had to get this set. Even better was that it was on clearance because of overstock issues, so I got it for 50% off!

A few weeks passed and I completely forgot that I had bought the thing. Then, on one particularly infuriating morning where Ben could not stand math and was fighting me on every activity, I remembered them and decided to pull them out. Why didn't I do it sooner?!? He absolutely loves this set, and so does Kate! The only problem is that Ben also thinks that he can dictate exactly what we do during the lesson, which is an entirely different issue.

Ben insisting that he needed to put on the odd numbers.
He used the equal sign as 11 because he couldn't find more ones... BRILLIANT!
He mastered this skill 2 years ago, but hey, it's extra practice.

Since I have had them out, Ben is REALLY starting to grasp subtraction. He is now understanding that subtraction is the opposite of addition. Since it is motivating (he loves LEGOs) and pressure free (he has all of the fine motor skills necessary to be successful), he wants to do it.

Using the colored shapes to help with subtraction.
This is what we did the very first day.
He had an entirely different set of problems today without the aid of shapes.
It just happened to be the same subtraction problem in the pictures below.

Working the problem without pictures!

This is his "I did it" face. He figured it out!

Both Kate and Ben are loving making pictures using the shape tiles. They are getting their creativity flowing and thinking about the shapes needed to make a picture. This practice is especially good for Ben since he has always struggled with drawing and the visual skills needed to make a group of shapes look like something. 

Ben says this is "happy Ben" wearing a party hat.

Kate's lollipop.

Ben's train. He was excited that he made it himself.

Kate trying to figure out how to match the activity card.
This was very difficult for her to do without help, but she did do it.

The only negative to this set? My family room has looked like this almost non-stop for two days.

We get them picked up and out they get dumped again. I strive for organization and have thought about separating the numbers from the shapes...but I have a feeling that particular attempt at organization will be quickly undone and cause more frustration than necessary.

The LEGO education line has some other really neat sets that I can definitely see in our future. One of those is a robotics set. Since we are still working on the fine motor skills needed for the small LEGOs, I think we will hold off for now. However, my hubby has mentioned that he might just like them... for the boys of course...

Leappad Review

We are now the proud owners of not 1, but 3 Leappad Explorers. Santa graciously got one for each child to minimize the arguing. I have to tell you that they are really worth the money. My kids love them and have been playing with them non-stop. With that being said, I thought I would post a list of pros and cons after having had them here a couple of weeks.

Pros:

• Apps means that there are no lost cartridges. You connect the Leappads to your computer via USB and then download the apps that the kids want. I was able to find the app cards buy 2 get 1 free right before Christmas, so I was able to get $60 of apps for $40. What that is equivalent to is 2 interactive books and 2 games.
• Apps work on up to 2 Leappads! That's great if you have more than one. Let me tell you, though... if you have 3, you might just have to go and buy some apps a second time or else your kids will draw blood.
• All Explorer cartridges work on them. I know some people who upgraded their Leapster Explorers to Leappads and are happy that they can use the same cartridges. Us, not so much, but it still is great that the systems that people bought a year ago don't go completely to waste. Plus, the games I got on clearance work on the Leappads.
• There is a built in video and still camera. Katie likes this especially. She has taken soooo many pictures of things. I actually think it is funny to see what she has taken a picture of. There are parts of her day that I didn't even know happened and now I have a pictorial memory of it. For instance, Kate was supposed to be taking a nap, but instead she took pictures of her feet, her room, her toys, and the tea party she was pretending to have....
• They come with a few built-in apps and then one of your choice. However, the one you choose has to come off of a short list and can only be put on that one Leappad. There were still some really fun options though, so it didn't really matter.
• Batteries are very easy to replace compared to the older model Leapsters. You just use the stylus to pop off the cover and then pop out the batteries. Super easy... you don't even need to carry a screwdriver. That's going to be really nice for our upcoming plane trip in the summer.
• There is a built in headphone jack!!! YAY!!!! No more needed to be said...

Cons:

• They run through batteries like CRAZY!!! Recently, I was sick and really not feeling well enough to do much of anything. My kids had a lazy day and spent the day playing computer games, watching TV, and playing their Leappads. By the end of the day, I had to replace the batteries twice in Katie's and once in the boys. We have decided that we are going to get the power cord so that if the kids are just sitting and playing, they can be plugged in instead of wasting the batteries. We are also looking into rechargeable batteries since that is what Leapfrog recommends.
• We had communication issues between the third Leappad and the computer at first. We tried everything in the help files and then sent an email... they responded telling me to try the help files, even though I specified that I had already done that. I was able to figure it out eventually after trying to connect it to my Mac instead of the kids' computer. The Mac mentioned something about it having an IP address. Evidently, each one of these devices has a "fake" IP address that has to be specific to that Leappad. I went in and manually changed it (thanks to a help file on Leapfrog about IP addresses, which they did not tell me to check) and voila! got it connected. It was really irritating at first, but now it isn't an issue at all. I have a feeling that it wouldn't be an issue unless you owned more than one Leappad, but I don't know if I would have been able to figure it out unless my Mac gave me that random error.
• The apps are expensive.... but I guess that they aren't as expensive as the cartridges. Just don't expect them to be as inexpensive as cell phone and tablet apps. The cheapest ones are $7.50 and are usually for games. The interactive books (which are really cool and VERY useful for us for reading comprehension), are a full $20. 

Overall, I highly recommend them. I also recommend getting the cases for them. The cases store the cartridges, an extra stylus (which comes with it), and offer padded protection for trips.  We are trying to teach our kids to be very responsible for them. In fact, the reason that we decided to get our boys these for Christmas instead of DSes is because they are horrible with their old Leapsters. They would often leave them in the car in extreme temperatures, drop them or throw them, step on them when they are on the floor and leave them around for little kids to destroy. We are trying to be strict with making sure that they put them away (and the cartridges) when they are done with them and to never ever put them on the floor. Since they each have their own, it is very easy to see whose is whose and who is not taking care of theirs. So far, so good.