Mood Master is a children’s toy designed to help children learn to recognize and express emotions, while also teaching them about art.

Problem: Children on the autism spectrum often have difficulty making eye contact with others, identifying emotions, and expressing emotions. One side effect of this is that these children also struggle to identify different facial features. Therapists, teachers, and parents tend to have a hard time finding engaging tools to aid the development of these skills. Many are forced to create their own charts, toys, and exercises because there is not much on the market for this purpose. Let’s say a therapist is working with a five-year-old client. This girl won’t look the therapist in the face when they are spoken to. One goal that they are working toward is being able to name or label facial features.

Solution: Mood Master is a wooden toy created to fill this need. As the girl plays with this toy, the therapist can show or hand the girl a wooden piece and ask her to name it. This allows her to practice recognizing and naming facial features while making different expressions and faces. Because each nose, mouth, eye, and eyebrow look different, she will also practice generalization in the process. Made for ages three and up, this toy was created with the special needs of autistic children in mind. Wood was chosen as the material since these children often place objects in their mouths, and there are no sharps edges as to avoid possible physical harm or unpleasant sensations. This toy, inspired by different art movements, includes different eyes, eyebrows, lips, and noses that the user can place where they want on the “face”. This brand includes different versions of the toy inspired by different art movements. For the purpose of this project, only the Cubism version was created. The purpose of the integration of art with this design is to inspire and encourage creativity. This also makes it a perfect toy to be sold in art museums.