Lots of language with easy bake

My new favorite app this week is the easy bake oven app, an app I downloaded on a whim because I found it for free and thought it might be amusing for my kids but in no way realized at first the possibilities it had for language! I used this app with so many kids already in just a week’s time to address so many goals!

The premise of the app is that you can virtually cook cake, cookies, cake pops, cup cakes, or pizza by mixing the ingredients, decorating the item, adding toppings and eating. My kids thought it was sooo much fun to pretend to make yummy creations and then “eat” them! What I loved was all the language we could address in one simple app. Below are some of the ways I used the app.

Following directions:
In order to cook properly you need to be able to follow directions appropriately. This app is no different. You have a recipe you have to follow and the directions are written so you know what you need to do (add mix, add water, stir, put on pan, put in oven etc.). Also for my more advanced kids who are working on multistep direction I would give them town directions of how I wanted my pizza toppings on (first pepperoni then green peppers) or how I wanted my cookie decorated (I want pink frosting, colored sprinkles and chocolate bunnies). This app can easily adapt to address a variety of concepts (first/then, before/after, a little/a lot, colors, etc.) you just have to be creative! I even created a written/picture list for my kids with autism to follow the directions to cook in this app!

Sequencing skills:
Cooking is a great way to address sequencing skills as there are a variety of steps that must be followed. For my kids working on sequencing events and describing how to do something I would tell them for their free time they could cook whatever they wanted on the app. Then when they were done I asked them how they did it. This was a great activity for sequencing because there are so many steps to cooking to be remembered and it is tough to do so if you haven’t cooked in a while or haven’t even had the experience at all! With this app the kids had a shared experience of cooking with me and then were able to retell what they just did. I was great to see kids who can usually give me only 4-5 steps to tell me how to do something suddenly give me 8-10 steps with detailed information because they just did the sequence. I also had a child who usually dreads writing sentences write an entire paragraph detailing how to make cake pops because she was so motivat

Requesting:
For my little ones working on using sentences to request I would allow them to look at the ipad to see the choices of what to cook and the toppings to put on and then required them to tell me verbally what they would like to do before allowing them to activate the buttons on the ipad to request. There is a plethora of choice in this app from what dessert you want to make to what batter you want to use to what toppings you want to put on. For my littlest ones who haven’t yet figured out how to touch and drag items to where they want there was even a built in communication need for them to ask me “help please” for me to place the desired item where they wanted it.

There are so many other possibilities for this app as well! You can work on counting the number of desserts you make, letter identification or even spelling simple words with the candy letters as toppings, colors when choosing the color frosting you want, or describing skills. In a group you could work on pronouns by determining who is going to eat the dessert as well as work on taking turns decorating the desserts. I love this app and hope you do too!

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/easy-bake-treats!/id462795218?mt=8

I didn’t know I could do that! Simple tricks

I went to the third annual ilearn conference a few weeks ago that DSAGC puts on and was so excited that even after my third year going I STILL learned some great new tricks about the iPad. My favorite speaker discussed built in functions of the ipad that could be useful for our kids with special needs.

First I learned that there is an assistive touch capability in the ipad. This is a great tool for using the ipad with someone who has motor or physical impairments as a person who can do a gesture can record themselves doing a gesture for the person who cannot make the gesture. This could be great to help someone who doesn’t have physical ability to use the physical buttons (home, mute, triple click, screenshot) as these can be recorded and then activated by using the assistive touch option. Also I noticed that one of my kis with Downs Syndrome has trouble with the four finger swipe between apps. This could potentially be used so that a different gesture could navigate between apps when multi-tasking. To activate assistive touch go to: settings-general-accessibility-assistive touch.

Next I learned that there is a way to make the ipad speak auto-text. I know this could be useful for some people I know who use word prediction, but don’t always read the predicted word carefully. It may also be useful for people with vision impairments or who need extra help with spelling. When turned on the ipad will speak the word it presents as a suggested autocorrect. To turn this on go to: settings-general-accessibility-speak auto text.

I also learned there is a “Speak Selection” feature. This feature reads to you selected text. It could be useful to those with reading difficulties as it will read selected text in emails, books, or websites. You can change the speaking rate and choose whether to highlight words as they are read. In order to turn on speak selection go to: settings-general-accessibility-vision-speak selection. To use speak selection hold your fingers on text to highlight it. Choose select or select all and choose speak.

A great tip you might already know is multitasking gestures. When multi-tasking gestures is turned on you can use 4-5 fingers to swipe right and left between open apps. You can also use those fingers in a pinch motion to return to your home screen. Or you can use fingers to swipe up for the multitasking bar (where all your recently used apps are hidden). To turn on multi-tasking gestures go to: settings-general-multitasking gestures.

My favorite feature on the iPad is the “Guided Access” feature. When Guided Access is turned on you are able to prevent kids from activating certain portions of the screen as well as prevent them from leaving a selected app. This is a great feature if you want a child to work independently on an app, but not get distracted by leaving the app and playing some angry birds! This may be especially helpful for kids who use the iPad as their AAC as they can have this app open and not have access to other apps on the device during learning time. To turn the Guided Access feature on go to: settings-general-accessibility-learning-guided access. Then once on to activate Guided Access go to the app you want to lock into, triple click the home button, use your finger to circle areas on the iPad you want to block, press start (top left). Once activated you will need your passcode you created in Settings to exit the app. The home button will no longer work to exit the app. When you want to leave the app triple click the home button and enter your passcode. Then press end to stop Guided Access.

Hope these tips make the iPad just a little easier to use! I know I’m loving my newfound knowledge and control of the iPad when I work with my kids on it!

Now I know my ABCs

So I just discovered this awesome app where it has songs for every letter of the alphabet and it inspired me to write a post on apps to learn ABCs. As we all know learning your ABCs is a crucial part of learning to read. For many kids I see learning the alphabet can be hard so I’d like to be able to make learning as fun and memorable as possible. I love the abcmouse.com app called the letter songs A-Z because it is a fun way to teach letter awareness through song. Each letter has an original song with a catchy tune. The tunes each have many words that have the sound in it. The words are shown on the screen so you can see the letters that go with the sound. Both capital letters and lower case letters are used (great way to learn identification). In addition to the songs there is a lyrics portion of the app where songs are all written out. This is a great way to work on reading as your child can practice reading lyrics that will sound familiar if they have listened to the song. Also this app is a great way to build vocabulary as there is a glossary section that defines each word that is used in the songs. The songs also allow kids to hear rhyming words and alliteration which are both crucial phonemic awareness skills.

I love the songs too! They are catchy tunes that offer a variety of styles of music. So far my kids love them too! When kids ask me to do something “fun” on my ipad during therapy I will let them watch one of the ABC videos and I have had kids squealing with delight. I love it because they are having fun during their “break” time and yet little do they know they are still learning! What is your favorite activity to teach ABCs? If you are looking for a fresh way to teach ABCs check out the link below!

http://www.abcmouse.com/lettersongs

Feel electric!

Many kids I see need help expressing their emotions. Expressing and understanding emotions is an important social skill for kids to interact well with others. I love the “feel electric” app to teach kids all about emotions!

Every time you open up the app you are greeted by an enthusiastic narrator and get to check in using three mood words to describe how you feel. You have tons of mood words to choose from and if you don’t know what a word says or means you just touch it and the narrator will define it for you using the appropriate intonation and providing a situation where he/she felt that way. Once you check in, there are lots of fun things to do. In “my life” you can create a mood dude. This is a cartoon character that you can change the facial expressions (eyebrows, eyes, mouth) to show others how you are feeling. This is a great way to discuss how people might look when they are feeling different emotions. You can also make a mood tale where you can choose silly words to make a silly story to describe different moods. This can be a great language opportunity as you could talk about why the story is silly and what emotion you might feel in the story. The “moodasphere” is a log where you can look back on all of your moods that you have previously checked in so you can track how you have been feeling.

In the “my games” portion there are three games to help teach you emotions. In “pets vs. monsters” you help bat hit the faces (that sounds more violent than it is!) that have expressions that match the feeling words. This is great to help kids learn facial expressions that go with certain feelings in a fun way. In “prankster madness” you play a fun game where you tilt your ipad to catch word balls that go with the facial expression you see. In “hey you guys….catch!” You throw the word ball to the face that the feeling word describes. All of these games are fun and engaging and you may not even realize all the emotion words you are learning while you play!

In “my stuff” there are pictures, videos, and music that help you to further develop your understanding of emotions. I think the content is great as it seems to be really expressive and engaging.

There are multiple modalities that are utilized in this app to help kids learn emotions which in my opinion makes this a fabulous app. The vocabulary it provides is also great. I mean it includes a variety of descriptive word such as furious, delighted, terrified and proud (along with 50 other emotions).

Best of all it is free and available on both apple and android products! Below is a link to find it in the google play store. It can also be found in iTunes as well. How do you feel today? Hopefully you feel lucky you found this great app on emotions!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sesameworkshop.feelelectric

Articulation apps for home

Parents have come to me saying they have been looking for apps to work on articulation at home, but all the apps seemed to be expensive or not very good. So I thought I would write on some great and reasonably priced apps to work on articulation skills at home.

Quick Articulation is a free app that has a variety of sounds in words with real life pictures. Its simple flash cards that may make saying words more fun than practicing flash cards on paper.

Speech to go is a free app that offers free cards with the /d/ sound. Other sounds are available for purchase for .99 to 2.99. The app does not do much such as record or take data and the positions are mixed (beginning, middle, end sounds), but it might be worth a download if you are working on the /d/ sound at least.

Artic PCS is a great app as far as inexpensive flash cards. It offers the /b/ sound for free and other sounds are .99. You receive 60 cards per sound (20 with the sound in the beginning, 20 in the middle and 20 in the end). Cards are drawings vs. real life pictures. They are a good deal for flash cards that give you 60 opportunities to practice your sound.

Articulation station is a great app that has a little more than other apps. You can download the program for free and get the the /p/ sound for free. The program addresses sounds in all positions in words, sentences and stories. If practicing words you can do just flash cards or play memory. When doing the sentences you can do a rotating sentence (the sentence stays the same but the target word changes-what your SLP will call a carrier phrase; this is easier than a unique sentence) or unique sentences (the sentence changes for every word). When doing the story option there are two levels. The first level has a short story with picture symbols to help with beginning reading skills. The second level has a longer story with words with target sounds highlighted and comprehension questions at the end (great to work on reading skills along with articulation!). Sounds can be a bought individually for .99 to 2.99 depending on the sound. Each sound comes with 60 words (20 in each position) that can be used in each of the above activities. All sounds can also be purchased together if needed as well.

Pocket SLP is a good value app if you need to work on a variety of sounds. For 4.99 you get flash cards for all sounds (approximately 10 words for each sound in each position: initial, medial, and final). The great thing about this app is it has pictures of where your tongue and lips should be to make the sound so if your child is having a hard time making a sound and you aren’t sure how to help them produce it this can be a great guide for you both to see how the sound is made. Also kids like the record feature to hear themselves say it and score themselves as correct or incorrect. This app allows you to practice words at the word, phrase and sentence level. There may not be many bells and whistles with it, but it is quality in the ability to provide practice attempts and give feedback.

Just a reminder these are apps that you could use as a supplement to your weekly therapy sessions. It is important to talk with your SLP about what sounds your child should be working on, how you can prompt them to produce the sound correctly, and what level your child is able to produce a sound at (word, phrase, sentence, reading, conversation). The best way to use these apps is to sit with your child and help them practice saying these words in a setting where you can both concentrate on the sounds being produced.

Stayed tuned for creative ways you can use your iPad to help your child practice articulation without using specified articulation apps!

What is your child’s favorite way to practice articulation skills while at home? How do you fit articulation practice into your busy schedule at home? I would love to hear the parent point of view on articulation practice!

See me talk

I just learned about this great AAC app when it went on sale for free a couple weeks ago for autism awareness month, but after reviewing “See me Talk” I would gladly recommend the app even at its normal $60 price tag. However as of this writing the developer has it on sale for $18.99 which I think is a steal! The app is set up with a similar format to PECS which would make it a great transition app from PECS to a high tech speech generating device. I just completed an ASHA CEU that stated how research suggests in order to have the most success with transitioning from PECS to a speech generating device we should keep as many factors the same as possible. This includes organization of words as well as keeping the symbols the same. It is hard for our kids to make a small change in devices and keeping these items the same can help kids be more successful with a new device quickly so they don’t become frustrated.

I like the easy navigation that See me Talk offers. All of the words you would use to start a sentence are on the left hand side color coded in red. All of the categories are labeled across the top (think similar to tabs for pages in PECS). When you click on a category a variety of items come up for you to say in the right hand box color coded in yellow. You then can create a sentence by choosing a red word and a yellow word to create sentences such as “I want snack” and “I like apples”. When you choose the words they go onto your “sentence strip”. You can then press the large “talk” button for it to say your sentence. My favorite part for beginning sentence communication is that when it says your sentences the entire screen goes dark except your sentence to really highlight was is said. On top of that each word of the sentence brightens when spoken. It really draws your attention to the fact that you are making a sentence and your sentence is made up of specific words which is a great feature for our concrete learners! Also another feature I LOVE is there is a search button. So if you can’t remember for the life of you where a certain word is stored you can search for it. This is a great feature as I can remember countless times when I programmed a word into a device only to not remember where the word was the next week. If we can’t remember where words are stored how are we expecting our kids to remember! But that leads me to the next great feature. When adding words or categories if you are making duplicate words it will warn you that the word you are trying to make already exists. You just need to search for the word in the search bar to find where it is located! This is great because according to AAC research we should not have more than one location for a word because we are teaching motor memory to find a word. If a child has to find the word toilet in the category “needs” at school but the category “house” at home they are going to have a harder time remembering how to find the word and therefore have difficulty telling you that most basic need. This app has created a setup where there never needs to be duplicate words again and words are always easily found. Amazing!

As far as editing and personalizing information this app makes that very easy to do. You just go to the left hand side and touch the tool bar then choose add a category, add a red word, add a yellow word or edit a current word. To add a picture you just take a picture of an object with your camera right in the app or use a picture from your photo library. I was able to add a category for items in our therapy gym and take pictures of all our large items for kids to request in about 5 minutes. My only concern is it might be a little too easy to add and delete items and I know I have had issues before with kids deciding they would like to do their own editing and random buttons are added or deleted! Hopefully this will not be the case with this app! Maybe in an update they will password protect editing. I am excited to try this out with my kids! It looks like it has tons of potential! Have you used this app? I would love to hear about your experience with it!

Mr. Potato Head Revamped!

I LOVE Mr. Potato Head as a therapy toy! There is so much great language to teach the toddler or preschool child while playing it! It’s great to work on labeling body parts, labeling the function of body parts (you hear with your ears etc.), using describing words, discussing pronouns, requesting, following multistep directions (put the eyes on first and then the hat) or even turn taking (“you put a piece in and then I will”). I have a great Mrs. Potato head that gets used daily. She has a variety of accessories in a variety of colors to discuss, but even with an entire box full of fun pieces she can still get dull from time to time. I just found the solution to those dull moments in a Mr. Potato Head app! This app offers a plethora of language and hours of Mr. Potato Head fun! Kids can choose to make the normal Mr. or Mrs. Potato head or dress them up in the 12 other costumes provided. Costumes include cavemen, aliens, pirates, king, ballerina, cowboy, knight, witch, and wizard among others. Kids can have fun creating their Mr. Potato head and then interact with them in settings such as the iceage, alien planet, pirate island, jungle, ballroom, candy village, wild west, castle, circus, haunted house, sea, or space station.  I had a patient the other day who was working on requesting and we pulled out this app. Her requesting increased as she was highly motivated to keep moving throughout the app. She had trouble dragging the pieces from the costume box to the Potato head so she HAD to ask for help in order to get her Potato Head made. She LOVED the scenes where she could interact with Mr. Potato head. They did such silly things that she was quickly requesting what she wanted to do to the Potato Head and laughed histerically at some of the things that Mr. Potato head did (eg. get squished so all his pieces popped off). She was squealing so loud we were almost a distraction to the other kids getting therapy! However she was having a GREAT session and was soooo motivated to talk! My favorite part about having Mr. Potato head in an app is when you are done there is no clean up and you don’t have to store all those pieces and worry about them getting lost! Do you love Mr. Potato Head? Check out the link below for the iPad version and enjoy hours of play with your kids!

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mr.-potato-head-create-play/id577912498?mt=8

Let’s talk bitsboard

I just recently started using my personal iPad in therapy. I have been following Facebook pages and blogs for a long time now seeing all the cool ways you can incorporate an iPad into speech therapy and I finally just HAD to try using it. The result: amazing success! The iPad has made my therapy life so much easier! It is amazing how there are so many things that you can do on it if you use your therapist brain. It has been a tremendous help with keeping me organized as I can find new therapy materials at the drop of a hat and the activities  are fun and motivating for the kids! I have seen kids who need breaks after five minutes doing “flash cards” sit with me for 30 minutes doing their work with the iPad and the best part is they are just having fun and don’t even know it is work!

I created this blog to share some of the ways I have found to utilize theiPad in therapy as well as share any other creative ideas I come up with in therapy. Starting this has been a struggle because there are so many great apps to share that I didn’t know where to begin! So I am going to start with my absolute favorite flash card app and you will just have to stay tuned for the plethora of apps I am looking forwards to sharing!

So the number one most amazing app I can think of…..the app that I feel like I could work on any speech goal with and finally get rid of those pesky flash cards that seem to always need sorting, rip or get lost is…..Bitsboard! I absolutely love Bitsboard and could probably find a use for it with every single one of my patients! Bitsboard is an amazing FREE flash card app with 9 built in games. There is a flash card function where kids can scan through flash cards. The photo touch function works on receptive identification of vocabulary. There are true and false questions, word to picture match up games and word builder games. Also there is a pop quiz function, a reader function and a spelling bee function. That alone allows a great variety of work to be done with kids who are learning vocabulary and reading skills.

But the most amazing thing about this app is the limitless vocabulary it could target! The app allows you to make your own flash cards or you could download free flash cards straight from the app! Teaching beginning vocabulary (animals, food, clothing, body parts etc.)? Then this app is for you! How about beginning sentences and grammar (-ing verbs, past tense, pronouns) Yep this app is for you! You can follow directions with prepositions or identify emotions. You can use your listening skills to see what object goes with a certain noise. Working on articulation? You can do a deck of a cards with your target sound in it and have the ability to record and playback a child’s production! Want to teach ABCs, numbers, shapes, or sight words? This app will do it! Still not convinced this is for you?  Get creative and make your own cards! My kids love doing the cards they have seen weekly in this new format. I took pictures of the cards we use frequently in the clinic and started doing them with kids on this app and they loved it!

I’m so excited for future updates as well! They say coming soon will be a memory game, bingo game, matching related objects game and sequencing game! Check it out here and let me know what you think!

http://www.bitsboard.com