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.
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.