The end of the year is such a popular time to get an iPad, either as a gift or as a business equipment investment. And while the purchase options are straightforward for the iPad, the decisions about which apps to buy and use can be pretty overwhelming.
As app developers, we really appreciate how much work and thought goes into the design and production of many apps, and as speech pathologists we have come to appreciate how useful certain apps have become in our day-to-day practice. So, in the spirit of the season we offer our following top list of apps for you to consider as you start to build your own professional library.
Monkey Preschool Lunchbox by THUP Games: http://goo.gl/yY6f
Good for early vocabulary including colors, shapes and numbers, as well as spatial awareness and matching.
Splingo by Talking Wizard, LLP: http://goo.gl/0bGUb
This is very fun and excellent for following directions with nouns, verbs, prepositions and adjectives. Great reinforcement features keep kids interested.
First Words Deluxe by Learning Touch: http://goo.gl/Vnjgw
Well suited for older children. Kids love matching the letters to “spell” the word. It has good sound effects and is a good vocabulary builder.
Flashcards for iPad by INKids: http://goo.gl/5xtGo
This is great for early vocabulary in various categories and for sight words.
Artik Pix by RinnApps: http://goo.gl/0BzSC
This is a strong app for kids with speech sound disorders. We really like the recording tool and the matching game.
SLP Minimal Pairs by SLP TechTools: http://goo.gl/aiI6c
OK, we’re obviously partial to this one, but we really use it every day to help kids recognize and correct articulation errors.
Old MacDonald by Duck Duck Moose: http://goo.gl/iAfhL
This is an interactive song app that is great to use for sound imitation, nouns, verbs and following directions as well as reinforcement.
Peekaboo! Guess Who? by Bacciz: http://goo.gl/CrPJh
This is a great app for auditory attention and auditory-visual matching.
Verbs with Milo by Doonan Speech Therapy: http://goo.gl/tcyXU
This app can be used for verb tenses, for fill-in-the-blank and for generating sentences. The best feature is the cute mouse that acts out the actions (so helpful with verbs) and it's more useful than still pictures.
Learn to Talk by iLearn2Talk: http://goo.gl/43dOL
We find this app to be great for late talkers, who need speech and vocabulary help. It includes two word phrases as well as "high impact" aka most important functional words.
My First Words – Flashcards by Alligator Apps: http://goo.gl/q8GFf
Good set of vocabulary flash cards
Talking Tom Cat by Out Fit 7 Ltd: http://goo.gl/JcQ1
This seemingly simple app is an excellent reinforcement tool, and also an interesting way to record productions for auditory feedback.
If you had only these apps on a deserted island you could do great speech-language therapy with children 12 months to six-years. These are the apps we use daily for children with disorders ranging from articulation disorders, to language delay, to poor sentence formation skills, to inadequate receptive language skills. Let us know what you think, and more importantly what would you add?