Sacred Heart sophomore, UofL grad student team up to create adaptive toys for children with mental, physical limitations

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - This Christmas, a Sacred Heart Academy sophomore and a UofL graduate student have teamed up to adapt some of this year’s most popular toys for children with special needs.

Sydney Amshoff was volunteering for a Christmas event at Kosair for Kids last year when she noticed how difficult it was to find toys adapted for kids with special needs.

She decided to do something about it but quickly learned it would be hard to do alone. Luckily, the stars aligned.

Sydney’s mother is a speech pathologist and a teacher. She told one of her students, Abbie Donaway, about Sydney’s plans.

As it so happens, Donaway’s mother is an engineer at GE, so when she asked her fellow engineers to help, they didn’t hesitate.

It took a lot of work.

“You have to find a way to unscrew them pull them apart,” Amshoff said, “rewire them, sew them back together.”

With everyone working together, they’ve been able to adapt roughly 30 different kinds of toys for children who wouldn’t have the physical ability to play with the exact same toy otherwise.

Gabriel’s mother, Sabrina Corbin, is blown away by the efforts of the Amshoff and Donaway.

“What it truly is,” Corbin said, “you get to witness the miracle of a child getting to play with something that they’ve never played with before.”

Amshoff and Donaway have big plans for the future too, with hopes of producing even more adaptive toys next Christmas.

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