There are just soooo many apps out there and my iPad has pages and pages of them. But while I was on maternity leave I sat down and did a massive cull. I find that I am always going back to the same handful of apps over and over again and because who doesn’t love something for free, I thought I’d share my “If I could only pick one free app for all around language, what would it be?”
The Sago Mini Forest Flyer has been around for a while (watch a video or hey, just trust me and download it!), but hands down the most versatile for my caseload. I don’t want to do an app review or explain too much how it works except to say that you guide a bird around the forest and there are lots of ’cause and effect’ features….
Vocabulary: For animals (bird, squirrel, butterfly) plant life (pine tree, dandelion) and season related (winter, icicles, frozen). Maybe try naming/finding 10 animals.
Predicting and Inferencing: What do you think will happen when the bird goes to the pond?
Speech: Great for ‘s’, ‘sh’ and cluster targets (swim, spin, shake, flower, blow, splash, dream)
Sentence Structures: I work on Subject + Verb (the bird is eating), Subject + Verb + Object (the fish is eating berries), Subject + Verb + Adverbial (the bird is eating in the forest), Subject + Verb + Object + Adverbial (the bird is eating berries in the forest).
Pragmatics: There are lots of great facial expressions to start talking about how they animals are thinking and feeling, and what their body language might mean.
Conjunctions: I ask a lot of ‘why’ questions or get the child to exp
and on their sentences structures.
Semantic: What goes with…. a pine tree, a basket, a swing etc.
Verbs: This has a TON of verbs, which is why I love it so much! From the simple: flying, splashing, drinking, playing…. to the funny…. burping, head-spinning, this app gives you so many animations.
So comment below and share your #1 fave FREE language app so we can all have more storage for tried and tested apps. Don’t forget to follow my Pinterest board about other FREE apps for SLPs.
Yes! I want FUNCTIONAL therapy freebies!
Madlibs has a great one
I have this too – I might start thinking about great apps for specific areas of language. Thanks for the idea.
Also CHOMP. Great time filler at the end as u write a note home.