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Thursday, February 27, 2014

Free App February: More Tools for Therapy

Check out these great tools for therapy!

 GuidedVideo is regularly $29.99 and as of today is still free. Get it quickly! This extremely useful tool could be used to reinforce a variety of speech and language skills. The description at the iTunes site may leave you wondering, but check out video at the website GuidedVideo.com and you will definitely want this app.


Quizlet allows you to create flashcard sets for your students that are not just flashcards. I find making the flashcards on the Quizlet website is easier and you have more options. Pictures and voice can be added. Log into your Quizlet account on your iPad to see the flashcard sets that you made on the website. Games provide fun reinforcement for students to practice vocabulary and a variety of skills. AND there are many flashcards/activities made and shared by SLPs - search "speech therapy." 

Educreations was my favorite find in 2013. Check out my earlier post to see how it can be used in speech and language therapy. 
  
Haiku Deck Create stories with photographs for your little ones or let older students easily create their own stories using their own photos. Create and talk about "how to guides," make articulation decks (or ask your students to make them) or use these easy to make presentations to teach new vocabulary. 

Bitsboard is a customizable app for teachers to create flashcards and more with images and audio. The free Bitsboard app comes with 3 FREE games - Flashcards, Explore, and Photo Touch. Other games can be purchased for $.99 each or all for $2.99.  However, the free version has so much to offer and is ideal for language learning. Use the many photographs to create your own activities or choose one of the ready-made activities in the "Shared" catalog. 

Create comics with Story Me. Turn your photos into cartoons and add speech bubbles or captions. Students can create comics of themselves, story characters and more. This app is perfect for all kinds of vocabulary activities. Take pictures of students performing actions and put the verb in the speech bubble. When teaching synonyms, take one picture and write a synonyms in each several speech bubbles. Just think of all the options!!


Diana

© 2014

Sunday, February 23, 2014

Free App February: Use Cats, Dogs, and Other Pets to Elicit Speech and Language

The children we work with love animals of any kind. Try using these "animal apps" to elicit speech and language. 



Use Cat Effects to stamp pictures of cats on any photograph. Create stories, answer where questions, and learn prepositions. 

Glad that Sago Mini Pet Cafe is still free - A great app for your young students. Talk about foods, describe using colors, and tell likes and dislikes. 


Baby Animals Lite by Playrific gives you videos, photos, books, songs, and interactive activities to elicit speech and language for so many activities.

Lil'Kitten Shopping Cart Game  Show understanding of food groups and the concepts moreless, and equals as you shop with Lil' Kitten. Students could discuss best prices, location of foods, and more. A good way to measure carry-over of language skills and phonemes in spontaneous speech. 


 Laugh and Learn™ Animal Sounds for Baby and Laugh and Learn™ Where's Puppy's Nose? are made by Fisher-Price for very young children. Work on cause and effect, joint attention, body parts and animal names and sounds







I have written about TinyTap in a previous post. With TinyTap, Make Games and Learn create your own activities or use any of the over 50 free pre-made animal activities at Tiny Tap's Market Place



Diana

© 2014

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Free App February: ChatterPix Kids

ChatterPix Kids, by Duck Duck Moose, is in a class by itself. Take photos of your favorite stuffed animals, toys, friends, pets, or any object. Add a line for a mouth and record your message. 

Perfect for auditory bombardment - take pictures of 10 or more toys and record appropriate words. 

Have pictures set up and ready to record. Let students in centers practice target phonemes while independently recording. 

Enjoy!

Diana

© 2014

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Free App February: Cars and Trucks






Playrific apps, Cars Lite and Firefighters, Fire Trucks, and Fire Safety Lite contain games and videos, originally found on the web, but grouped together for your students on the iPad. 




Use Cars in Sandbox: LITE to teach concepts such as forward, backward, go stop, pick up, in, and out.






Sort it Out 1 - Sort vehicles that go move in the sky, on the road, or on water. 
Toca Cars has only been free for a few weeks so grab it quickly. This app allows for much creativity and many opportunities for expressive language. 
Planet Go - Label and describe the vehicles seen on the free flashcard set.
A Funny Car Wash Game for Kids  - Wash, wax, and dry two free cars. Practice verb tense and using describing words such as shiny, dirty, clean, wet, and dry. 

Road Vehicles - Move vehicles to appropriate destinations.
Peekaboo Vehicles - Listen to the sound and predict the identity of the of the vehicle behind the cloud.  


Enjoy!

Diana

© 2014

Saturday, February 8, 2014

Free App February: Stories to Read


Read these story apps with your young students.
Enjoy these FREE book apps!



Riding with Rosa Parks by LAZ Reader 

Learning A-Z, from Language Technologies, Inc., has many other free titles. Definitions of key words and the simple language make books ideal tools for language lessons. 




Goodnight Safari by Polk Street Press LLC  


This interactive book for young children allows them to help the animals prepare for bedtime through seven interactive scenes. This simple story is perfect for practicing verb tense, WH questions, prepositions, and labeling actions. 



Shout Science! is a comic storybook app for readers ages 7-11.  It consists of three narrative biographies that take place during the Scientific Revolution in Europe. Good for making predictions, inferences, and answering complex questions. 






Read and create simple stories with eight FREE Collins Big Cat apps by Harper Collins Publishers Ltd. Check out my 2013 post describing these apps.









Professor Garfield's Fat Cat Books - #1 By Paws Incorporated are perfect to use when working on phonemic awareness. 







Diana

© 2014

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Free App February: Apps for this Winter Season


Read and retell the story Into the Snow: A Stella and Sam Adventure. Talk about making a snowman and things found under the snow. As of January 2016, this app costs $1.99. 

This app, Winter Animals Videos, Games, Photos, Books and Activities for Kids by Playrific, has activities perfect for describing, carry-over, increasing phrase length and a variety of speech and language activities. As of January 2016, this app costs $.99. 


Visit my post, Snow Day! - Apps and More, to find out more about the free apps Snow Man (and free visual supports) and Snow. Snow Man and Snow are not available as of January 2016.
 
The simple picture book, I Like Snow, by GrasshopperApps.com has beautiful pictures of children in the snow with simple sentences. Great for vocabulary. Customize this book by adding your own photos and a repetitive line. 

Draw With Hearts allows you to add hearts to your own photographs or screenshots. This works well when working on prepositions or cause and effect. 

Diana

© 2014

Saturday, February 1, 2014

Free App February Is Back!



Last February, I posted free apps that could be used in therapy or to help you with everyday routines. I thought that it might be difficult to repeat that, but new apps come out everyday. 

During Free App February 2014, you can look forward to Apps for this Winter Season, More Tools for You, Stories to Read, Cats and Dogs (And Other Pets), Cars and Trucks, and more! 

Many of the apps that I posted last year are still free. So, if you didn't see these posts in 2013, check them out here. 

Tools for You

Apps for Readers

Apps for Young Children

Apps for Young Readers

Creative App Ideas From Other SLPs

Apps that Promote Expressive Language 

Apps for Communication 




Diana

© 2014