Autism Spectrum Disorder is a disorder that begins after a time of apparent normalcy in the development of our child, and that extends until the end of the first year of life approximately. From here, typical features of the disorder begin to appear and evoke a kind of "break" in development.
These circumstances take place when the child is developing functions such as sharing focus of attention (for example, pointing) or developing language for declarative purposes (for example, show, teach, share ...), or facial recognition of emotions, among others . For the latter, a toy designed for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder to help children with this disorder improve their facial expression recognition abilities.
"Build-a-Robot" has been prepared by Laura Chun, of the Thai company Toys Plan, who designed it so that it did not look like a toy created for children with special needs, since it is a toy that can be attractive to all children.
This toy consists of four different types of heads, each of which represents a different geometric shape (pyramid, sphere, cube and cylinder) and a face with the four basic emotions (joy, surprise, anger and sadness). This game also aims to develop fine motor skills, since the little one must be able to properly exchange heads.
It also helps the child to improve different sensory aspects, thanks to the different textures of the toy depending on the type of facial expression, and auditory aspects, since a characteristic noise is produced when exchanging the different faces.
"Build-a-Robot" is a very simple toy, with a fairly affordable cost (approximately 30 euros) and which can be purchased at the Amazon online store. In addition, this toy has the design award “2011 Good Design Award” in the category of products for children due to its great simplicity, its clear didactic function, its validity for any child to play with it and with a fairly adequate price.
