The Best Toys For Your Young Child With Down Syndrome To Develop Communication Skills, Social Skills And Imagination
Are you looking for a toy that will help your young child with Down Syndrome improve their communication, social skills, and imagination?
You’ve come to the right place!
Hey Mama Bears, full disclosure here. There are affiliate links in this post so if you click on the link and buy the product I will earn a small commission. Now that we’re clear on that let’s get back to rocking life with special needs!
Keep in mind Mama Bear most toys that are great for other children are going to be great for our kids with Down Syndrome too! I believe buying toys has become even more important nowadays. Screens are everywhere and while electronic devices geared towards kids can be helpful and useful I do feel their use should be monitored and limited especially when our kids are younger.
So when our kids aren’t glued to a screen we want to capitalize on that time by providing high quality toys that are going to encourage social interaction, communication, and imagination. We want to buy toys that are going to teach our children new skills and help them develop emerging skills.
When buying toys for your child with Down Syndrome ask yourself these questions…
Does the toy encourage communication and interaction?
Can the toy be played with in more than one way?
Does it match my child’s interests?
Will this toy be safe and appropriate for my child?
Will this toy help my child learn?
If the answer is yes to all of the questions you’ve found yourself a great toy for your child! Go ahead and invest in it!
One thing I observed when Max was younger was I often had to encourage and engage him in play. If I didn’t he really didn’t play. Anna, Max’s younger sister, was always looking for someone to play “baby dolls” with or “kitchen” and helped Max participate in play. It was a blessing to have them rather close in age.
I do hear from other parents that they’ve made similar observations about their own kiddos with DS. Many studies have shown the power of play. It is so important to overall growth and development so we need to make it a priority.
Here are toy suggestions to help you engage your child with Down Syndrome in play to help develop their communication skills, social skills, and imagination.
Best Toys To Improve Communication, Social Skills, And Imagination For Young Children With Down Syndrome #1: Kitchen Set
How This Toy Can Help Your Child: Our kitchen set was played with on a regular basis! I would say it was one of our top used toys for sure. It’s a great toy because it targets so many skills such as imagination and creativity, fine motor skills, gross motor skills, social skills, language and communication. It checks all the boxes!
Best Toys To Improve Communication, Social Skills, And Imagination For Young Children With Down Syndrome #2: Play Food
How This Toy Can Help Your Child: Play food checks a lot of boxes too! I used play food a lot to work on things with Max. Max would help me “make dinner” and then we’d sit and pretend to eat. During this time we talked a lot. I would narrate everything we were doing and ask Max to do things like “Please give me a banana Max.” This was so great for his language skills!
I also used play food to help him learn colors and work on counting. There are lots of great play food options at lower price points too such as this cookie play set, pizza making set, and sandwich making set.
Best Toys To Improve Communication, Social Skills, And Imagination For Young Children With Down Syndrome #3: Baby Doll
How This Toy Can Help Your Child: Baby dolls are a great way to teach social skills among other things. When I was pregnant with Anna we bought Max a doll to help him learn how to hold a baby, burp a baby, etc. I love that there are baby dolls who have Down Syndrome available to buy for your little because representation is so important! There are soft baby dolls if your child likes soft and snuggly things. Toys that go along with baby dolls are great ideas such as high chairs, strollers, and bottles. This stroller may be a bit more sturdy for our little ones to push especially if they struggle with walking and coordination.
Best Toys To Improve Communication, Social Skills, And Imagination For Young Children With Down Syndrome #4: Blocks
How This Toy Can Help Your Child: We used blocks A LOT! The wooden blocks are great for encouraging imagination. Max would build “pens” for his farm animals out of wooden blocks.
They’re also great for communication and expanding vocab. We used blocks to help Max learn a lot of prepositional phrases such as next to, on top of, behind. We used letter blocks to help Max learn his letters and spell three letter words like cat and these nesting blocks to help Max learn the alphabet. We would stack the nesting blocks in order and sing the alphabet song pointing to each block once we were done.
Best Toys To Improve Communication, Social Skills, And Imagination For Young Children With Down Syndrome # 5: Microphone
How This Toy Can Help Your Child: Max loves to sing but he loves singing into a microphone even more! Max will grab his microphone and sing along while watching his favorite videos on YouTube. There are also battery free microphones which may suit your kiddo just fine. Microphones help promote language development.
Best Toys To Improve Communication, Social Skills, And Imagination For Young Children With Down Syndrome # 6: Barbie Doll
How This Toy Can Help Your Child: As a child, playing with barbie dolls was my absolute favorite thing to do! Oh the adventures my imagination created for Barbie and her friends and the conflicts they had to resolve! Whether they were trekking through the rain forest or arguing over who was going to wear the fabulous pink dress to the party, my imagination was engaged and I was honing those communication and social skills.
Max did play with barbie dolls as a kid. He would often reenact events that happened during his day at school. This is a common thing for kids with DS as it helps them process what happened.
Best Toys To Improve Communication, Social Skills, And Imagination For Young Children With Down Syndrome # 7: Magnetic Tiles
How This Toy Can Help Your Child: Magnetic tiles are an awesome toy to promote creativity. This was a toy we bought around the age of 8 for Max because that was when he was ready for it. If your child really excels with fine motor activities they may be ready for it earlier. Max still uses magnetic tiles to create paths in which to roll marbles through. It’s a form of stimming for him and it helps him regulate himself.
Best Toys To Improve Communication, Social Skills, And Imagination For Young Children With Down Syndrome # 8: Play House
How This Toy Can Help Your Child: Playing house works on so many skills! Playing house with Max was a fab way to work on speech without him realizing we were working on speech! It was also a great way to work on social skills such as how to greet someone at the door.
Best Toys To Improve Communication, Social Skills, And Imagination For Young Children With Down Syndrome # 9: Musical Instruments
How This Toy Can Help Your Child: Music is a fun way to promote communication and imagination. We’d put on a Wiggles song , grab a tambourine or maracas, dance, sing, and play our instruments!
Guitars and keyboards are other fun instruments for our kiddos with DS. Max loved a guitar similar to this one when he was younger and then as he became older and bigger he graduated to something like this.
Best Toys To Improve Communication, Social Skills, And Imagination For Young Children With Down Syndrome # 10: Train Set
How This Toy Can Help Your Child: I love that with this train set a child can use their imagination to create a unique track! We had a similar wooden train set and had so much fun creating all kinds of tracks for the train to run on. Creating the tracks required cooperation (social skill) and lots of communication.
While our train sets have been put away for awhile now Max’s train table is still out and in use. Max stims which is one way he self regulates. Max likes to stim by moving marbles back and forth across the train table often using magnetic tiles to create paths.
Best Toys To Improve Communication, Social Skills, And Imagination For Young Children With Down Syndrome # 11: Tea Set
How This Toy Can Help Your Child: Tea parties were a beloved past time in the Mathe household. Sometimes we’d get crazy and serve lemonade rather than water! It was a special treat! We’d also eat crackers or cookies while drinking our tea and by tea I mean water or lemonade.
Tea time was the perfect time to teach social skills such as how to sit at a table, how to serve others, and how to have a back and forth conversation!
Best Toys To Improve Communication, Social Skills, And Imagination For Young Children With Down Syndrome #12: Books
How This Toy Can Help Your Child: Reading exposes your child to new words and helps them gain knowledge about the world including different perspectives. It also stimulates their imagination. We love to read!
Best Toys To Improve Communication, Social Skills, And Imagination For Young Children With Down Syndrome # 13: Animal Figurines
How This Toy Can Help Your Child: Animal figurines engage your child’s imagination and encourage language. My parents own a farm so farm animal figurines were very popular in our house but if your child loves zoo animals or dinosaurs then buy those! To be honest we had all three! We’d play with the animals and practice the sounds they made.
Best Toys To Improve Communication, Social Skills, And Imagination For Young Children With Down Syndrome # 14: Dress Up Clothes
How This Toy Can Help Your Child: Dress up was another Mathe family favorite! We still have a trunk full of dress up clothes and props we dig into every now and then. I mean sometimes you need a feather boa or pirate hat!
Dress up clothes were great to get the imagination fired up as well as to work on communication. It’s always much more fun to speak like a pirate! Seriously, sometimes if Max needed to work on sight words we’d dress up like pirates and practice the words. Of course because we were dressed like pirates we’d say them like a pirate. Max thought it was hilarious and I was super happy we were practicing sight words without a fight!
Best Toys To Improve Communication, Social Skills, And Imagination For Young Children With Down Syndrome # 15: Doctor Set
How This Toy Can Help Your Child: Using a toy doctor kit is a great way to practice social skills as well as to help your child understand and prepare for what will happen at the doctor’s office. It’s great for communication skills too. Your child can be the doctor while you’re the patient and can tell you to “Say Ah” when they need to look into your mouth and “Breathe” when it’s time to listen to your lungs.
Best Toys To Improve Communication, Social Skills, And Imagination For Young Children With Down Syndrome # 16: Trucks
How This Toy Can Help Your Child: Trucks are a great toy! When we played with trucks we made all the sounds trucks make such as “vroom” and when they backed up we’d say “beep.” We used trucks to learn words like “go” and “stop” as well as “fast” and “slow.”
Best Toys To Improve Communication, Social Skills, And Imagination For Young Children With Down Syndrome # 17: Play Dough
How This Toy Can Help Your Child: I love play dough! It has SO MANY USES for our kiddos! It definitely encourages imagination and can be used to work on social skills such as sharing a color, asking for a color, etc. It’s also great for language building. You can work on learning words like “roll” and “flatten” as well as identify the colors of the play dough or make shapes and learn the words for the shape. There are so many possibilities!
So there you have it Mama Bears! Toys that promote communication skills, social skills, and imagination in our children with Down Syndrome. I hope this helps you and your child rock this special life!
If you enjoyed this post then you may want to check out….
The Best Toys For Your Toddler With Down Syndrome
5 Toys To Help Your Toddler With Down Syndrome Improve Fine Motor Skills
The 10 Best Books For A Mom Of A Young Child With Down Syndrome
Dandelion Tribe Takeaway: Toys that help young children with Down Syndrome develop communication skills, social skills, and imagination are #1 Play Kitchen #2 Play Food #3 Baby Doll #4 Blocks #5 Microphone #6 Barbie Dolls #7 Magnetic Tiles #8 Play House #9 Musical Instruments #10 Train Set #11 Tea Set #12 Books #13 Animal Figurines #14 Dress Up Clothes #15 Doctor Set #16 Trucks #17 Play Dough
Mama Bear Share: What toys do you love?
