Fiber Optic Tails are a great interactive visual addition to any sensory room. 

• These fiber optic tails are durable and can handle stretching or chewing
• Tails do not heat up and are safe to touch
• Includes: remote, light engine, and 300 tails

Benefits

• Encourages engagement with Tails through touching and play
• Creates a calming visual display

Need Fulfilled

• Visual and tactile input

Specs for Fiber Optic Tails

• Tails are 9'10" long
• 16-watt light source (fiber optic engine)
  

This dual pedal foot swing silently enables the release of excess energy while sitting, alleviating anxiety and increasing concentration. Fidgeters place feet on separate pedals independently moving them back and forth, relieving stress and decreasing boredom. Quiets the urge to move by releasing excess energy improving seat behavior enabling greater concentration. Excellent for school and home, fitting under desks and tables leaves the hands free for class and homework. Made of heavy gauge steel and thick rubber feet, it stays in place on both hard floors and carpets.

Benefits

• Helps develop gross motor skills
• Redirects fidgeting energy
• Improves mood and focus

Need Fulfilled

• Proprioceptive input

Stats for Dual Pedal Portable Food Swing

Weight
20 lbs

Dimensions
17.5x14x12”

Glo Pals Characters were developed by a mother with an autistic child to help him overcome his fear of water. They activate when wet! Use these delightful characters in the bathtub to keep your child so captivated that they won't want to get out, or incorporate them into your sensory learning plans. As soon as they leave the water they turn off. Perfect for water tables, bath tubs, baby pools, or anything filled with water.

• Includes 2 light up cubes 
• Cubes activate and light up when wet - turn off when out of water
• LED lights
• Lasts for 8 lighted hours
• Batteries are not replaceable
• Ages 3+ 

Benefits

• Makes bath time more fun
• Helps with the development of color recognition
• Introduces cause and effect
• Ideal for water and sensory play

Need Fulfilled

• Visual input

Specs for Characters

Dimensions
4 x 0.75 x 4 inches

Package weight
4.5 oz

Introducing the All-New Tangle® Furry Fidget Friends! This adorable assortment of soft, bendable, and super tactile buddies is perfect for sensory seekers and Tangle lovers everywhere! Collect all 5 friends!

Benefits

• Improves fine motor skills
• Useful for hand and wrist therapy
• Can help develop social skills and transition into pretend play with other children
• Improves language skills

Need Fulfilled

• Tactile input, Social and Emotional Development

Indulge in the delightful experience of the Jalapeno Popper Fidget Toy. Designed for kids, this unique toy offers a fun twist on traditional fidget toys. Simply press the 3" pepper to reveal a surprising pop of pimiento, providing a satisfying sensory experience. Immerse in the captivating world of imaginative play with this quirky yet engaging toy.

• Ages 3+

• Teaches cause and effect
• Helps develop fine motor skills

Need Fulfilled

• Auditory and tactile input

2021 Schneider Family Book Award Young Children's Honor Book (American Library Association)

Experience the true story of lifelong activist Jennifer Keelan-Chaffins and her participation in the Capitol Crawl in this inspiring autobiographical picture book. This beautifully illustrated story includes a foreword from Jennifer and backmatter detailing her life and the history of the disability rights movement.

This is the story of a little girl who just wanted to go, even when others tried to stop her.

Jennifer Keelan was determined to make a change―even if she was just a kid. She never thought her wheelchair could slow her down, but the way the world around her was built made it hard to do even simple things. Like going to school, or eating lunch in the cafeteria.

Jennifer knew that everyone deserves a voice! Then the Americans with Disabilities Act, a law that would make public spaces much more accessible to people with disabilities, was proposed to Congress. And to make sure it passed, Jennifer went to the steps of the Capitol building in Washington DC to convince them.

And, without her wheelchair, she climbed.

Publisher: Sourcebooks Explore
ISBN: 978-1492688976
Age Range: 4-8 Years

Papa Brings Me the World by Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw (2020)

Most parents drive a car or ride a bus or train to work - but not Lulu’s papa. He navigates mountains, deserts, and oceans, each time returning home with pockets full of treasures. There’s an ancient calculator from China, a musical mbira from Zimbabwe, and a special game from Sumatra. But the best treasures are special stories Papa tells when he comes home - tales of playing peekaboo with rare birds in the Andes and befriending dragons in the Irish Sea.

This long-distance love story between parent and child celebrates inclusivity, imagination, and the richness of global cultures.

ISBN: 9781250159250
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Reading Age: 3-6 years

Carly's Voice: Breaking Through Autism by Arthur Fleischmann and Carly Fleischmann (2012)

At the age of two, Carly Fleischmann was diagnosed with severe autism and an oral motor condition that prevented her from speaking. Doctors predicted that she would never intellectually develop beyond the abilities of a small child. Carly remained largely unreachable through the years. Then, at the age of ten, she had a breakthrough.

While working with her devoted therapists, Carly reached over to their laptop and typed HELP TEETH HURT, much to everyone's astonishment. Although Carly still struggles with all the symptoms of autism, she now has regular, witty, and profound conversations on the computer with her family and her many thousands of supporters online.

In Carly's Voice, her father, Arthur Fleischmann, blends Carly's own words with his story of getting to know his remarkable daughter. One of the first books to explore firsthand the challenges of living with autism, it brings readers inside a once-secret world and in the company of an inspiring young woman who has found her voice and her mission.

Publisher: Touchstone
ISBN: 9781439194157

The Parents Guide to Down Syndrome: Advice, Information, Inspiration, and Support for Raising Your Child from Diagnosis Through Adulthood by Jennifer Jacob and Mardra Sikora (2016)

Help your child succeed and thrive!

As a parent of a child diagnosed with Down Syndrome, you may be feeling unsure of what to do next or where your child's journey will take you. In this book, authors Jen Jacob and Mardra Sikora share their experiences and guide you through life with DS with expert advice from diagnosis to adulthood. Each page teaches you ways to support your child through major milestones; nurture their development; and ensure that they succeed behaviorally, socially, and cognitively. You'll also find valuable information on:

• Sharing the news with loved ones
• Transitioning into primary school
• Developing your child's social skills
• Discussing future opportunities, including employment and housing options

With The Parent's Guide to Down Syndrome, you will have the tools you need to raise a happy, healthy, and thriving child.

ISBN: 978-1440592904
Publisher: Adams Media

The Everything Parent’s Guide To Sensory Processing Disorder: The Information and Treatment Options You Need To Help Your Child With SPD (2014), Terri Mauro 

If your child has been diagnosed with sensory processing disorder (SPD), you understand how simple, everyday tasks can become a struggle. With The Everything Parent's Guide to Sensory Processing Disorder, you can help your child learn how to reduce stress and minimize the symptoms of SPD. In this all-in-one guide, Terri Mauro provides all the information you need regarding SPD, including:

• An in-depth definition of SPD and its effects
• The newest treatments, therapies, and diets
• Techniques for use outside of the therapist's office
• The latest research on physical causes of SPD
• Advice for coping at school, home, and play

Your child deserves to live a life free of the difficulties SPD can bring. The Everything Parent's Guide to Sensory Processing Disorder gives you professional advice to help your child to manage sensory needs and feel calmer, happier, and in control, now and in the future.

ISBN: 978-1440574566
Publisher: Everything

Play to Progress: Lead Your Child to Success Using the Power of Sensory Play (2022), by Allie Ticktin

A game-changing book on child development--and the importance of physical play--for this digital and screen age.

For children to develop to their fullest potential, their sensory system—which, in addition to the big five of sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell, includes movement and balance (vestibular), body awareness (proprioception), and internal perception (interoception)—needs to be stimulated from the time they are born. Their senses flourish when they explore their environment by touching new textures, including their food, running, jumping, climbing, and splashing outside.
 
As an occupational therapist with a specialty in sensory integration, Allie Ticktin has seen an increase in cases of children who struggle to sit in circle time or at their desk upright and who are delayed in walking, talking, and playing by themselves and with their peers. In the recent past, kids spent their days playing outside and naturally engaging their sensory system and building key developmental skills. But with increasing time pressures for both kids and parents, children are spending more time in front of screens and less time exploring and interacting with their environment.
 
The good news is that boosting your child’s sensory development doesn’t take enormous amounts of time or supplies, or any special skills. Here, Ticktin discusses the eight sensory systems and how a child uses them, and offers easy, fun activities—as well as advice on setting up a play area—that will encourage their development so that your little one will be better able to respond to their emotions, build friendships, communicate their needs, and thrive in school. That’s the power of sensory play.

Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher: TarcherPerigree
ISBN: 978-0593191927

An Outsider's Guide to Humans: What Science Taught Me About What We Do and Who We Are (2020), by Camilla Pang PhD

WINNER OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE

An instruction manual for life, love, and relationships by a brilliant young scientist whose Asperger's syndrome allows her--and us--to see ourselves in a different way...and to be better at being human

Diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder at the age of eight, Camilla Pang struggled to understand the world around her. Desperate for a solution, she asked her mother if there was an instruction manual for humans that she could consult. With no blueprint to life, Pang began to create her own, using the language she understands best: science.

That lifelong project eventually resulted in An Outsider's Guide to Humans, an original and incisive exploration of human nature and the strangeness of social norms, written from the outside looking in--which is helpful to even the most neurotypical thinker. Camilla Pang uses a set of scientific principles to examine life's everyday interactions:

- How machine learning can help us sift through data and make more rational decisions
- How proteins form strong bonds, and what they teach us about embracing individual differences to form diverse groups
- Why understanding thermodynamics is the key to seeking balance over seeking perfection
- How prisms refracting light can keep us from getting overwhelmed by our fears and anxieties, breaking them into manageable and separate "wavelengths"

Pang's unique perspective of the world tells us so much about ourselves--who we are and why we do the things we do--and is a fascinating guide to living a happier and more connected life.

Loving Your Place on the Spectrum: A Neurodiversity Blueprint (2021), Jude Morrow

Loving Your Place on the Spectrum provides answers to many of your questions about autism, helping you to embrace neurodiversity and love your autistic self and the autistic people in your life. Jude Morrow speaks from personal experience when he says that he has learned to be proud to be autistic and he wants you to be proud too.

Browse through the many books available on autism and you might notice a trend: too many of them are written by neurotypical professionals who aim to “fix” autism or help autistic people appear “normal.” Jude Morrow noticed this problem and decided that something needed to change.

Loving Your Place on the Spectrum is a guide for living a happy and successful autistic life. Jude combines his own experiences as an autistic man with the stories of others to provide a handbook to help autistic individuals navigate life’s major changes, from childhood to college, jobs, and relationships. Each chapter identifies common issues faced by autistic people of a particular age or social group and explains how educators, teachers, parents, and professionals can be supportive through all these life stages.

The world needs a new perspective on autism, and Jude Morrow’s Loving Your Place on the Spectrum provides parents, workplaces, individuals, and society an alternative, strengths-based viewpoint, where autistic people are accepted, embraced, and loved.

Paperback: 255 pages

The Autism Job Club: The Neurodiverse Workforce in the New Normal of Employment (2015), Michael S. Bernick and Richard Holden

The Autism Job Club is a groundbreaking book for bringing adults with autism and other neurodivergent conditions into the work world.

The book has its basis in the autism job club that the authors have been part of in the San Francisco Bay Area, the job-creation and job-placement efforts the club has undertaken, and similar efforts throughout the United States.

The authors review the high unemployment rates among adults with autism and other neurodivergent conditions more than two decades after the ADA, and national data on autism employment and unemployment with the individual employment searches of job club members.

Bernick and Holden also outline and explain six strategies that, taken together, will reshape employment for adults with autism:

*The art of the autism job coach.
*The autism advantage in technology employment.
*Autism employment and the internet economy.
*Autism employment and the practical/craft economy.
*Autism and extra-governmental job networks.
*Autism and public service employment.

The Autism Job Club will be a vital resource for adults with autism, their families, and advocates who are committed to neuro-diverse employment, not unemployment. But it will also speak to a far broader audience interested in how to carve out a place for themselves or others in an increasingly competitive job world.

Paperback: 272 pages

Anything But Typical (2010), Nora Raleigh Baskin

Told from the first-person perspective of an autistic boy, Nora Raleigh Baskin’s novel is an enlightening story for anyone who has ever worried about fitting in.

Jason Blake is an autistic twelve-year-old living in a neurotypical world. Most days it's just a matter of time before something goes wrong. But Jason finds a glimmer of understanding when he comes across PhoenixBird, who posts stories to the same online site as he does.

Jason can be himself when he writes and he thinks that PhoneixBird-her name is Rebecca-could be his first real friend. But as desperate as Jason is to met her, he's terrified that if they do meet, Rebecca wil only see his autism and not who Jason really is.

By acclaimed writer Nora Raleigh Baskin, this is the breathtaking depiction of an autistic boy's struggles-and a story for anyone who has ever worried about fitting in.

Age Range: 10-12 years
Paperback: 224 pages

Cowboy & Wills: A Remarkable Little Boy and the Puppy that Changed His Life by Monica Holloway (2010)

The day Monica Holloway learns that her lovable, brilliant three-year-old son has autism spectrum disorder, she takes him to buy an aquarium. But what Wills really wants is a puppy, and from the moment Cowboy Carol Lawrence, an overeager and affectionate golden retriever, joins the family, Monica watches as her cautious son steps a little farther into the world.

With his new "sister" Cowboy by his side, Wills finds the courage to invite kids over for play dates, conquer his debilitating fear of water, and finally sleep in his own bed with the puppy’s paws draped across his small chest. And when Cowboy turns out to need her new family as much as they need her, they discover just how much she has taught them about devotion, loyalty, and never giving up.

Sometimes it’s what you don’t know to hope for that saves you. For Monica and Wills, salvation came in the form of a puppy with pale blond fur, chocolate brown eyes, a fondness for chewing the crotch out of underpants, and a limitless capacity for love.

Publisher: Gallery Books
ISBN: 9781416595045

Raising Your Spirited Baby: A Breakthrough Guide to Thriving When Your Baby Is More . . . Alert and Intense and Struggles to Sleep by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka Ed.D. (2020)

Does your baby bursts into tears when another baby in the same situation sleeps soundly?
Do the strategies your friends swear by not work with your baby?
Do the upsets and shrieking come out of seemingly nowhere and take forever to subside?

Moms and dads who answer “yes,” are the parents of a spirited infant. Spirited infants are the outliers—the exceptions to the “rules.” They are genetically wired to be alert and intense. Raising them takes special skills and patient perseverance.

In this groundbreaking new book, beloved parenting expert Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, Ed.D., offers her findings in the fields of neuroscience, sleep, temperament, self-regulation, attachment, and parent-child interactions, and shares what she has learned from hands-on experiences with families to bring this much-needed perspective to the parenting of babies under eighteen months of age, including:

• A plan for success with the 5-step Spirited Baby™ Methodology
• How to master the “NUDGE” approach to help your baby thrive
• Parental Permissions – practical advice for parents to help them make sure their needs are met
• Resources to ensure the whole family unit finds balance and happiness

Raising Your Spirited Baby is a shame-free, guilt-free how-to handbook that will be embraced by parents—and everyone who supports them—as a simple, trusted companion.

ISBN: 9780062961525
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks

To Siri with Love: A Mother, Her Autistic Son, and the Kindness of Machines by Judith Newman (2018)

From the author of the viral New York Times op-ed column "To Siri with Love" comes a collection of touching, hilarious, and illuminating stories about life with a thirteen-year-old boy with autism that hold insights and revelations for us all.

When Judith Newman shared the story of how Apple’s electronic personal assistant, Siri, helped Gus, her son who has autism, she received widespread media attention and an outpouring of affection from readers around the world. Basking in the afterglow of media attention, Gus told anyone who would listen, "I’m a movie star."

Judith’s story of her son and his bond with Siri was an unusual tribute to technology. While many worry that our electronic gadgets are dumbing us down, she revealed how they can give voice to others, including children with autism like Gus - a boy who has trouble looking people in the eye, hops when he’s happy, and connects with inanimate objects on an empathetic level.

To Siri with Love is a collection of funny, poignant, and uplifting stories about living with an extraordinary child who has helped a parent see and experience the world differently. From the charming (Gus weeping with sympathy over the buses that would lie unused while the bus drivers were on strike) to the painful (paying $22,000 for a behaviorist in Manhattan to teach Gus to use a urinal) to the humorous (Gus’s insistence on getting naked during all meals, whether at home or not, because he does not want to get his clothes dirty) to the profound (how an automated "assistant" helped a boy learn how to communicate with the rest of the world), the stories in To Siri with Love open our eyes to the magic and challenges of a life beyond the ordinary.

ISBN:  978-0062413635
Publisher: Harper