Phonak's Fairy Castle is an interactive sensory tool.
Phonak's Fairy Castle is an interactive sensory tool.
For many children, a trip to the doctor or dentist can be a daunting experience - and the same can be said for a visit to an audiologist.
So hearing aid company Phonak New Zealand has built the Fairy Castle, an interactive sensory tool designed to make the experience ofgetting a hearing aid much easier for children and their whānau.
The castle is designed to engage kids and their families in several ways.
Each of the Fairy Castle’s five towers represents one of the five senses of the human body sight, smell, taste, touch and sound.
The tallest tower in the Fairy Castle is reserved for sound.
By wearing a hearing aid, children can connect to the sound tower and hear a story read aloud by New Zealand theatre and film actor and director Jennifer Ward-Lealand.
A child with a hearing aid interacts with the Fairy Castle.
The idea is to get children engaged with the Fairy Castle so that it takes the focus away from the clinical environment they are in and encourages them to be less self-conscious about wearing a hearing aid.
The details in the Fairy Castle are exquisite and each tower houses a miniature clinic inside to the human sense to which it is dedicated - complete with the tools needed for assessing and treating each sense.
