Students at P.K. Yonge Developmental Research School are working to make and distribute adaptive toys throughout the Gainesville community and beyond this holiday season.
P.K. Yonge’s robotics team is leading the annual Holiday Toy Adapt-A-Thon. The team is called FIRST Robotics Competition Team 4118 and is known as Roaring Riptide. It accepts requests from community members and adapts toys specifically for children with disabilities.
Brycelynn Rivera, a P.K. Yonge student and member of Roaring Riptide, explained that while the team adapts toys and makes assistive devices all year round, offering these toys is especially important during the holiday season.
“So, imagine you’re a kiddo, and you have a present during Christmas,” she said. “You open it up, it’s this brand-new beautiful toy … and you can’t play with it because you can’t click the small button right here.”
Roaring Riptide’s adaptive toys enable children with various disabilities to play with toys they otherwise might not be able to.
Joseph Santiago, another member of Roaring Riptide, explained that the team adapts toys for children with a variety of conditions, such as cerebral palsy, ataxia or autism spectrum disorder.
“We’re just trying to help people we feel are already in sort of a marginalized population, the people who need it the most,” said Leigh Anne Brewster, an engineering teacher at P.K. Yonge and the team’s coach.
To adapt the interactive toys, the team creates new, 3D-printed buttons that are bigger and easier to press. Then, they rewire the toys to connect the new buttons. This provides a more accessible way for a child to use the toy.
According to Brewster, this type of button can cost about $70 or more online. Roaring Riptide, however, can make them for about $10 each. She said the team gives the toys to children and families for free — they’re not trying to patent their designs or market a product.
Santiago explained that the material they use to print the buttons — PLA plastic — is affordable, nontoxic and comes in many colors.
“What we’re trying to do is bridge a gap and make more affordable solutions that we give out for free because we don’t want this to be something that parents, especially, worry about,” Santiago said.
The team tests the toys extensively before giving them to children. Brewster said they check each 3D-printed button at least 10 times to make sure all the parts are working properly.
“If you give a toy and a button to a kid, we don’t want it to last two weeks,” Rivera said. “We don’t even want it to last a year. We want it to last as long as possible and be more durable for the kid who’s playing with it.”
Roaring Riptide accepts toy requests through an online form, and the team adapts each toy according to the family’s specifications. They will also wrap the toy or put it in a gift bag according to each request.
Families can choose from a variety of toys, from bubble makers to talking plush animals like Sing-Along Elmo or My Pal Scout.
The team distributes the toys to local families, schools and clinics. Brewster said they’ve recently delivered toys to UF Health Rehab Center for Kids at Magnolia Parke.
They also ship the toys by mail. They’ve gotten requests from as far north as Virginia, she said.
The team has gathered about $5,000 from grants, donations, fundraising and allotments from its own budget. This money enables them to continue adapting toys through the holiday season, Brewster said. So far, they’ve gotten more than 90 toy requests, she said.
The Holiday Toy Adapt-A-Thon takes place on multiple days when the team meets to adapt toys together. The next Adapt-A-Thon is Saturday, Brewster said, though the team will continue working on the toys on their off days to get all of the requests finished in time for the holidays.
Rivera said she likes to think of the team members as elves making toys in Santa’s workshop. Rivera and Brewster agreed that the team is ultimately trying to prevent children with disabilities from being left out during the holidays.
Brewster said that play is “one of the times in a child’s life that they shouldn’t miss out on.”
“We’re just trying to prevent that from happening so you can still play with your brand-new toy just like every other kid,” Rivera said.