National Lekotek Center

Specialties

Our Mission: Lekotek uses interactive play experiences, and the learning that results, to promote the inclusion of children with special needs into family and community life.

History

Established in 1980.

In the early 1960’s in Sweden, two parents of children with disabilities sought ways to help their children during their formative years. Believing that intervention strategies must be a part of a child’s earliest experiences they wanted to develop a program that included their children fully in their society while fostering their development. The result was the creation of the first Lekotek, «Lekotek pa Blockhusudden,» in Stockholm.

Today, Lekoteks are widespread throughout Scandinavian countries. Providing services to all children with special needs, Lekoteks are now a mandatory part of the social welfare delivery system in Norway and Sweden.

In the late 1970’s, two American special educators, Sally deVincentis and Sharon Draznin, learned of the Lekotek concept at a conference in Scotland. They were so inspired by the idea that they traveled to Norway to receive training in Lekotek methods and they opened the doors to the first U.S. Lekotek in Evanston, IL in 1980.