Inga’s Au-some Guide to Fidget Toys

May 12, 2019

Fidget toys are fun for everyone, and for children with special needs they can be part of an effective learning strategy. As you may remember, my son, F.T., is on the autism spectrum, and we have lots of fidget toys and supplies around the house for various situations: school, concerts, car trips, air travel, and just curiosity. It’s not just F.T. who plays with fidget toys, though—autism runs in families, and all of us are pretty fidgety.

If you have concerns about your child’s learning and development, I strongly recommend that you talk to your child’s pediatrician, and possibly seek out specialists like a developmental pediatrician, an occupational therapist, or a physical therapist; visit a diagnostic center like the Autism Community Network; and—for children ages three and up—start a conversation with the special education team at your child’s school. You are not alone: at the bottom of this post are links to heartfelt stories by Alamo City Moms Blog contributors about autism, sensory processing disorder, and more. In the meantime, we want to share our knowledge from hours of play-testing fidget toys to share our greatest hits.

The Fidget Spinner

Fidget spinners burst onto the scene and became a huge trend in 2017, causing controversy about whether they should be allowed in classrooms. We have a lot of fidget spinners around the house. Some have been disassembled—anything for science!—while others have been stacked, synchronized, covered in clay, and more.

Is it worth paying more for a top shelf fidget spinner? While it’s amazing to dump out a bag of 20 fidget spinners on a tabletop and get them all going simultaneously—we know, we’ve tried it—you do get what you pay for: better balance and smoother bearings for a quieter, longer spin.

Popular variations include the fidget cube—or, better, the fidget dodecahedron—and the spinning fidget cube.

Fancy But Worth It

The Ball of Whacks is a polyhedron made of plastic segments with embedded magnets. It’s a dream come true to take it apart and reassemble it into patterns. It comes with an instruction book, but making your own shapes is intuitive. We discovered the Ball of Whacks in the gift shop of the Children’s Museum of Houston; museum stores are great for discovering new fidget toys.

Tangle Jr. is a ring made of segments that curve 90 degrees. The pieces never settle quite right, so your fingers keep twisting the segments to find an equilibrium. Tangle is a good travel fidget because there are no pieces to get lost and it’s relatively quiet to use. We found Tangle at Toy Zone in Alon Market, an excellent place to shop for brain teasers and travel toys.

The OSM (pronounced like “awesome”) is a toy that twists around itself in circles. We got ours at the McNay Art Museum store, which is a treasure trove of fidgets with impeccable design.

If your kids like the sensation of endless folding and twisting, there are tutorials for making DIY LEGO fidget cubes.

Flow rings, under brand names like Bollepo or Toroflux, are an upgrade to the classic Slinky. They go from flat to toroid, and can slip down your arm onto a friend’s hand.

Crazy Aaron’s Thinking Putty includes an amazing range of products in different colors and with properties, such as sensitivity to heat, magnetic fields, and ultraviolet light. Manipulating the putty and watching it ooze is endlessly satisfying. Putty should be used with supervision, however, because it can get stuck in hair, clothing, or upholstery. Homemade slime is a popular and cheaper alternative, but also carries the risk of getting messy.

Rare earth magnets are popular in building toys like Neoballs and also as connectors in Q-man figures. However, keep these tiny magnets away from small children because swallowed magnets can cause serious problems.

Brain Teasers

Rubik’s Cube is a classic, and there are many variations, like this one with textured squares. We have fun playing with cube-solving apps, too.

What we call the snake toy is a variation on the Rubik’s Cube. These are good for hours of fun. They are slightly clicky, but quiet enough for most situations.

Perplexus is a 3D marble maze in a clear ball. The marble can’t get lost; however, it does make some noise rolling around inside.

An Oblo sphere is a ball with segments that come apart in a tricky way.

Cubebot is a wooden robot that folds up into a cube. It’s fun to pose it different ways.

Even if you don’t have room to spread out a whole campaign, dice for tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons are fascinating. Get a dice pouch to avoid losing them.

Young Fidgeters

Magnatab is a board embedded with little metal beads; a magnetized stylus brings the beads to the surface to make pictures. It’s a robust, reuseable toy. The glow-in-the-dark version is our favorite. The budget option is the Fisher=Price Doodle Pro.

Squigz are silicone pieces that include suction cups, knobs, and bends. They stick to flat surfaces (including foreheads) and to each other. The pieces are satisfying to hold and pull apart, sort of like stress balls or squishees.

For very young children who still put things in their mouths, here are some good choices: Bright Starts Lots of Links, Fisher-Price Rock-a-Stack, and Fisher-Price Stack & Roll Cups.

Simple Fidgets

F.T.’s special education team discovered that fire drill days—or, really, any days with unexpected transitions—go better with a good supply of pipe cleaners. Sometimes he would come home from school with a green pipe cleaner tied to his belt loop. He likes the soft texture, and he can bend the wire over and over again.

My family and I are fans of jazz and classical music, and we often go to live performances and concerts. Sometimes it’s a stretch to keep small bottoms in seats for a whole concert, but noisy fidget toys are a no-no. Now we keep a supply of pipe cleaners in the minivan for concerts because they are silent to play with and keep hands busy so that ears and minds can remain open to the music. My son likes to make spirals, and my daughter crafts things like flowers, bracelets, and crowns.

Another simple fidget: tape. We have a family member who likes to tear off a piece of tape and roll it together, sticky side out. Sometimes he makes a large loop, but more often he makes a small tube and then crimps it into a tiny triangle or circle. We find a lot of these scattered on the floor under his desk.

As a kid, I kept a supply of embroidery floss on hand for making friendship bracelets.

For even more inspiration, check out these resources from Jorge Ochoa, OTR, of Tamborhythms.

Freedom to Fidget

Fidget toys are a beautiful way to bring together your hands and your mind. For children with special needs, they can help make difficult situations go more smoothly and make learning possible again. I hope this guide inspires you to try different fidget toys and supplies with your children. Please comment to tell us your favorite stories about using fidget toys.

All photos taken at the Impact Guild; read more in this post about co-working spaces.