Z OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY TOOLZ
ZOTTZ is an occupational therapy tool focused on development of fine motor skills; such as holding pencils, picking up cheerios, cutting with scissors. It helps a child develop finger strength, focus, and hand-eye coordination; critical tools for life.
ZOTTZ is tangible tech, reversing regression.
With 16 mode selections, it is customizable to any child’s needs. There are so many sound and LED variations, they will never run out of combinations. Keeps children motivated to investigate more.
ZOTTZ is a 3D pad with fun finger exercises and challenges, inspiring grand achievements.
ZOTTZ is Mobile, powered by safe 3.7 Volt batteries.
Features of ZOTTZ:
– VERTICAL GRIP for thumb pressure development
– HORIZONTALGRIP for wrist strength development
Each child is unique. ZOTTZ is flexible, designed to easily adjust to the child’s needs.
Technically speaking: ZOTTZ is based on the Arduino, a platform of interfaces programmed through a custom electronics SKETCH.
ZOTTZ hopes to give the inspired gift of ability. This is seed money to support the mission to help challenged children master fine motor skills.
Every penny of support will go towards delivering ZOTTZ to a child needing Fine Motor Skill development. For many children simple hand skills, life sustaining skills we take for granted, are extremely difficult. Hand gestures needing help like: cutting with scissors; holding a pencil; pinching to hold or grip a tiny object; applying pressure with thumb and index finger hard enough to hold a pencil or open a button, pinch and pull on a zipper.
Through the power of Innovation, the goal of this ZOTTZ KS campaign is to change children’s lives from dependent to independent with early intervention; to help with brain, eye, hand coordination development. Hope to reach many with a little help from our crowd funding friends.
“Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”….Mother Teresa.
ZOTTZ is the AFFORDABLE THERAPIST for your home
Leave it on the table and your child will:
The power of ZOTTZ is it beckons the child to interact, the eternal babysitter therapist. Mobile, fun, small footprint. Parents get a breather, a much needed respite, as the child’s hand muscles get focused exercise. Developing fine-motor skills effectively and easily, in the comfort of the home, where the child can learn in leaps and bounds.
ZOTTZ is Autism reversed, providing positive sensory feedback to motivate children to focus and develop finger strength and coordination. Regression reversed, REVOLUTIONARY.
The perseverance of a father, the successes of a son
On a cold December evening of 2010, I found my 18-month-old son, eyes in an angled glazed look, twirling around the hallway to the flashing red ADT security motion sensor LED. Distressed, I searched YouTube for ‘twirling in toddlers’ and discovered my toddler son was Autistic.
Frantically, I began researching Autism cures and intervention. For the last five years it has been my mission to help my son overcome Autism.
By the time Zarrar turned 4, his fine motor skills were very poor. He had difficulty gripping and cutting with scissors. He was getting Occupational Therapy at his school, but his challenges persisted.
Christmas 2013, I bought an Arduino experimenting pack. I hooked up one micro switch embedded in a clamp to flash an LED when he gripped and pressed the clamp. He was mesmerized by one LED, kept pressing on the clamp hard to make it flash again and again.
A light turned on in my head.
The positive sensory feedback was making him grip and press. Then I added sound and it was even a bigger hit with Zarrar.
After thousands of hours of work over the last two years, this has evolved into ZOTTZ with 5 critical fine motor skill development tools.
Jingle Bells: My son Zarrar calls ZOTTZ Jingle Bells. He gets up in the morning, turns it on, presses and grips the different interfaces so he can listen to his favorite rhymes over and over again. His IEP (Independent Educational Plan) scores in fine motor skills have gone up from 2 & 3s to 8s & 9s.
It has helped my son tremendously. Decided, why not introduce ZOTTZ to his schools? Now it is being used by local children, helping them master scissors, pencil gripping, pinching and gripping in general.
This year Zarrar won First Prize in Special Education Photography for the State of California in the PTA Reflections Competition. This involved taking over 3,000 images with a point and shoot camera, an iPhone and his iPad, utilizing all of his fine motor skills.
Our mission is to deliver more ZOTTZ to help children all over in need of fine motor skill development.
ZOTTZ is a fully functional prototype today. The next step is to get the funding for production.
Base goal $5,000 – allows printing of 3D interfaces, plug-n-play, screws into the learning platform of ZOTTZ. Each plug-n-play is customizable to the child’s needs.
Stretch goals
$10,000 – fund a rubberized base and plastic cover for ZOTTZ, preparation to manufacture in mass quantity.
$25,000 – develop Therapist software, monitors the child’s behavior, gives feedback to the tasks the child needs to further their fine motor development.