Stacker Toy

Stacker Toy by PlayTales is a ring toss like game. The ring looks like the old fashioned stacker toy that we all had as a child. You place the rings one at a time on the pole until you create the cone of rings. You can not pick the wrong ring which is one thing I would change as it adds challenge to this toy. This is a simple easy to use toy for baby to toddler age. You have the standard 6 rings you have with a regular stacker toy that you stack according to size. I would highly recommend this toy for a starter toy :)

https://www.facebook.com/myPlayTales?ref=ts
http://www.myplaytales.com/en/

My First Phone

My First Phone by Playtales is one of the new toys on Playtales. With this phone your child can learn numbers, colors, animals. The play phone has always been a childhood fav in most homes for both boys and girls alike. This phone looks like your basic phone with three buttons that contain numbers, animals and their sounds, and colors on the last button. When your child touches one of the three buttons the keypad will change to that theme. My fav has to be the animals. When your child presses one of the ten animals shown it will show up on the screen of the play phone with the picture of that animal, it will make it's sound, and show the word as well as say the word of the animal. The sound in this app is done wonderfully and is very clear. This toy looks simple but contains a fair amount of items for your child's interest. A great addition to Playtales :) Highly highly recommended :)

https://www.facebook.com/myPlayTales?ref=ts
http://www.myplaytales.com/en/
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/playtales-kids-interactive/id389523239?mt=8

                                                ***4/23/2012 till end of week*** :)

Super Duper Publications apps

: Fact or Opinion?, Do and Does, What Are They Asking?, Compare and Contrast Fun Deck, What's Being Said? Fun Deck, Let's Predict Fun Deck, and What Does Miss Bee See?. Super Duper is bring us new apps very fast and quickly and I love it!!!. I use all their apps on a regular basis at home for speech therapy. All their apps are simple and easy to use at home or away. Right now Super Duper Publications has over 30 apps available on the market. Please use my link at the end of the page to go to their website to check out all the wonderful apps they have to offer. I'm going to give you a little snapshot into each of the apps mentioned above :)

Fact or Opinion?: This app offers 56 illustrated cards plus audio. You can select which cards you want to use with your child/children or you can select all. You can track up to 5 children at a time with this fun deck. You can score this app automatically or manually. There is also the option to email the results as needed. With this app your child must decide if the statement is a fact or an opinion. Here's an example: "Soccer is easier to play than basketball." Your child then must select fact or opinion. I would say this app is geared toward the older child as younger children might not know what a fact or an opinion is. I have started working on this with my daughter slowly by adding cards that I think she may be able to answer. I would highly highly highly recommend this app :)

Do and Does: This app offers 52 illustrated cards plus audio. You can track 5 children at a time with this app and score manually or automatically. With this app your child/children will decide between do or does in the sentence. Here's an example: "___ dogs bark?" your child then will pick between does or do. Sentence structure can be difficult for some children including my own so these types of apps help them build on these skills either on their own or with an adult/group. I would highly highly highly recommend this app :)

What Are They Asking?: This app offers 56 illustrated cards plus audio. You can track up to 5 children at a time. This app does not score automatically and requires adult supervision for tapping the correct response (green for yes/ red for no). Your child/children will be shown a picture on the screen and when they tap the picture it will say "What is she/he asking?". Your child/children will then verbally tell you what the person on the screen is asking. I really like this app for speech therapy at home as it is very easy to use. It can be a lot of fun to hear your child's responses and it help build on them asking questions in a question format. An example of a picture in this app is: Two people sitting on a boat fishing. Your child will then come up what the boy is asking the girl in the picture. I would highly highly highly recommend this app :)

Compare and Contrast Fun Deck: This app offers 52 illustrated cards plus audio. You can track up to 5 users at a time. This app also does not score automatically and requires adult supervision for tapping the correct response. This app can be used a couple different ways. You can choose to use the cards for how they are alike or different. If you choose to email the results you may want to add a note in the email which you were following that day (alike/different). When your child presses on the picture in this app it will name off the pictures and then you will have to ask the child what is alike or different about the two objects. An example of the pictures would be a bike and a car. Since you do the scoring you can choose which you would like to work on which makes this app a very good app for any age. I would highly highly highly recommend this app :)

What's Being Said? Fun Deck: This app offers 52 cards plus audio. You can track up to 5 children at a time. This app also does not score automatically so requires adult supervision for scoring. With this app your child must say what is being said in the picture. When your child touches the screen it will say "What is she/he saying?". Your child then must choose what the people/animals are saying in the app. One example of a picture is a dog sitting in a chair with a cat outside of the window. They have their paws extended with speech bubbles above them. Your child must then tell you what they might be saying to each other. This is a great app to start working with in the preschool years on up especially if your child has a hard time with conversations or story making. I would highly highly highly recommend this app :)

Let's Predict Fun Deck: This app offers 56 cards plus audio. You can track up to 5 children at a time. Once again this app does not have automatic scoring so an adult must choose if correct or incorrect. This is a prediction app where your child must predict what is going to happen next. This can be difficult for children to decide what may happen next in a scene. Your child will be shown a scene within the app and when they touch the picture it will tell your child what is going on in the picture and then ask them "what happens next". One example of this is a man mixing ingredients. The picture says: "The man is mixing ingredients. What happens next?". Your child then must verbally tell you what is going to happen next. I highly highly highly recommend this app :)

What Does Miss Bee See?: This app offers 56 cards plus audio. You can track up to 5 children at a time. Once again no automatic scoring so an adult must score the answers manually. This app works with a friendly little be named Miss Bee. The app will ask your child what Miss Bee sees in each scene. Your child then will tell you what they see in the picture. This is one of the cutest apps I've seen yet from Super Duper (not that the others aren't just I really like the bee :) ). You can use this app by having your child tell you what they see in the picture and/or what Miss Bee might have seen there as well to expand on their answers even more. One example of a scene from the app is: "What does Miss Bee see..... at the football game?". Your child will then tell you what Miss Bee can or could see at a football game. The app will read these questions aloud to your child but then you must score them accordingly. I highly highly highly recommend this app :)

https://www.facebook.com/SuperDuperPublications?ref=ts
http://www.superduperinc.com/Default.aspx
http://www.superduperinc.com/apps/apple.aspx

Software Smoothie

Software Smoothie brings you two wonderful apps: iBaby Buttons and Felt Board. Both apps are very well made and fun.

iBaby Buttons is made mainly for babies and toddlers but can be used other ways as well. This app can help with object-word association, cause and effect, speech and visual discrimination as well. This app works by making buttons. You can touch anywhere on the screen to make a button. Each button is interactive and will react to touch and movement of the iPad. This app can even be customized with your own pictures and sounds. This app can be very helpful with speech and many other things depending on how you customize it. As a suggestion for this you could make your own buttons with different expressions and have your child pop that expression when you tell them to find it. There is many was this app could be used with this option if you use a little imagination :). There is a parent shortcut that makes it hard for your child to accidentally change settings on you. I highly highly recommend this app for baby's on up :)

Felt Board is a wonderful and very awesome app. This app gives your child (or you) many different options to make your own felt board without the mess of all the pieces. This app builds on imagination and helps with fine motor skills as well. This app includes shapes, numbers, letters, animals, facial expressions and soo much more. You can make popular nursery rhymes and preschool songs by using the animals that are included in the app. I found this app to be very fun to play with for adults as well as children. This app can make a wonderful teaching item as well a fun everyday app. I've used it many different ways here at home and just love it. My kids love making scenes with the animals and have really enjoyed seeing mom make the songs/stories lol. I highly highly highly recommend this app :)

https://www.facebook.com/SoftwareSmoothie
http://www.softwaresmoothie.com/
http://www.softwaresmoothie.com/ibaby-buttons-videos/
http://www.softwaresmoothie.com/felt-board-videos/
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/felt-board/id492342753?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ibaby-buttons/id430261125?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

Wasabi's Larry apps

Wasabi Productions currently has three books in the Larry Lizard series. My children and myself have found all three stories to be fun and enjoyable. I personally love lizards and think they are very cute :). The three titles are Lazy Larry Lizard, Look Out Larry!, and Lost Larry. Lazy Larry includes a bonus "Leapin' Larry" game as an added bonus to the wonderful start of the Larry series. Look Out Larry! offers a memory match game at the end of the story and Lost Larry offers little mini games throughout the story. Each of the three stories are fully animated with little surprises through out. These stories offer movie-like animation and include the "read with me" option with each story. The first story I had from Wasabi was Ten Giggly Gorillas which I fell in love with right away. After that I knew I would also enjoy the Larry stories and boy was I right. I would highly highly highly recommend these wonderful stories with fun and enjoyable animations to add to your story book collection :)

http://www.wasabipro.com.au/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Wasabipro/202637279795418
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lazy-larry-lizard/id370137977?mt=8
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/look-out-larry!/id427064272?mt=8
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lost-larry/id488014950?mt=8

Pegs and Holes

Pegs and Holes by Playtales is a great app for little ones to start matching shapes. Playtales recently started adding toys to their available downloads to expand on their wonderful app that offers great interactive stories and now toys!!!. This is a great addition to their toys as it offers a simple toy with great color and no interfering items. This is a classic children's toy that works very well for fine motor skills. Your child must match the shape to the correct hole in the block. Adults will recognize this very familiar toy and children will enjoy placing the shapes into the holes :). Highly highly recommended toy to your Playtales collection :)

https://www.facebook.com/myPlayTales?ref=ts
http://www.myplaytales.com/en/

Little Piano

Little Piano by Playtales is one of their newest toy additions to the Playtales collection. This app presents you with a little piano that includes music. You can choose to just play the piano, listen to the piano, or copy the highlighted keys on the piano to make your own music. This helps with fine motor skills as your child has to follow along with the keys and is also a fun easy to bring along keyboard. The sounds are done wonderfully with no strange keyboard noises you get with some keyboard apps. I would have really loved for them to add the title to the songs being played as when your child is pressing the keys it is sometimes hard to tell which song is being played. This is a great addition to building on Playtales as a whole and I would highly highly recommend this addition to build on your Playtales selection :)

https://www.facebook.com/myPlayTales?ref=ts
http://www.myplaytales.com/en/
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/playtales-kids-interactive/id389523239?mt=8

iF Poems

iF Poems by Clickworks Limited is a wonderful poetry app for children to adults. There is over 270 poems in this app with options to record yourself reading a poem, emailing a poem, and much more. You even have the option to tap on a word and get it's definition in the dictionary. There is many different types of poems in this app all the way from bedtime poems to scary poems. When you first open up the app you have choices of: categories, poet, audio, search, my poems, and info. Under the category option you have many choices of different types of poems or you can even search by three different age groups (0-6, 7-12, and 13+). Under the poet option you will find all different poets from a to z. Some examples of the poets included are: William Blake, Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, and a whole lot more. When you hit the my poems option it will show your favourites that you've selected and also any that you have recorded yourself reading. Some of the poems have been also previously recorded so they will read aloud for you. When your in a poem you will be able to get the poet bio, add to your favourites, record, play audio (if available), and email. There is also the option towards the bottom to enlarge the print as needed. This is a wonderful collection of poems and I would highly, highly, highly recommend this app for family fun poetry reading :)

Here's straight from the developer of this wonderful app :)

iFPoems is a poetry app for both children and adults. It has 230 classic poems from Lear’s “The Owl And The Pussycat” to Yeats’s “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”. All the poems, we think, are a joy to pass down the generations, to share, to educate and enjoy. Although poetry can be easily accessed on the Internet, we found that there was too much choice for each poet, and too many versions of each poem. Together we researched and checked to make sure that not only were our poems the most accurate, but the best collection. It is a carefully chosen selection. There are poems by T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Siegfried Sassoon, Lewis Carroll, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Rupert Brooke, William Shakespeare, Lord Byron, Edgar Allen Poe and many, many others.

iFPoems is easy and fun to navigate, for example you can search by section - you can look for a Funny poem, a War poem or a poem for Bedtime.

You can also search by age. We have separated the poems into three age groups: age 0-6, 7-12, and 13 and over.

Some of the other features include:

o Recording option.

o Dictionary definitions.

o A Favourites page.

o As well as having a choice of categories and age groups - you can search by title, author, and the first line or by any word.

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/if-poems/id474446630?mt=8
www.ifpoems.com

www.facebook.com/ifpoems

@ifpoems

 

 

We are all born perfect

We are all born perfect by MOBITAB d.o.o. is wonderful app about teaching children about pregnancy and birth. This story helps parents teach their children about conception all the way to the birth of a child. This topic can be difficult for parents to teach young children about but the question always seems to arise sooner or latter. This app does all this in a beautiful and interactive way. There is many things to interact with in the story such as the butterflies and the sun/moon. I would recommend viewing this story before showing it to your children to make sure you agree with everything being shown first. Everything is shown in a kid friendly way but does show sperm. They explain it as little fish and sperm (see example in pictures below) but it may be something some disagree with so I don't want you to be surprised when it's shown. The voice and the music is calming and soothing throughout. This would make a great story if you or someone you know is about to have a baby. highly highly recommended story from MOBITAB d.o.o. :)

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/we-are-all-born-perfect/id484266494?mt=8
http://bornperfect.net/
https://www.facebook.com/bornperfect
https://twitter.com/#!/BornPerfect
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCQezwiL_JY&feature=player_embedded

Dodo Teacher: Words

Dodo Teacher: Words by MOBITAB d.o.o. is a great app for teaching spelling. This app is set up in game form and supports the game center. There is over 400 words from many different categories. Some of the categories are nature, food, clothing, and much more. There is also 9 different languages available. You interact with Dodo by making him either happy or sad depending on your answers or by making fun of him. The object will be shown on the TV screen in the app and then you must then pick which letters go in the word. The letters will scroll on the bottom of the page with friendly elf like looking creatures. The app is timed so you must think fast. Great for children that have already learned to spell just need to work on quickness. This is a recommended app :)

Pros: great friendly characters
         clear real pictures
        
Cons: too fast moving
           letters don't always come out in order of word making new spellers have a harder time
           letters might move back if you don't get them right in their square

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dodo-teacher-words/id475707043?mt=8
https://www.facebook.com/dodoteacher
https://twitter.com/#!/DodoTeacherApp
http://dodoteacher.com/

What's That Sound? Learning to Listen and Identify Sounds

What's That Sound? Learning to Listen and Identify Sounds by Different Roads to Learning, Inc. is a wonderful app to help teach sound recognition. This app helps children learn the different sounds things make and to identify them using pictures. Your child will be given a sound and three pictures to choose what makes that sound. If they get the sound right they will be given a congrats and a picture of excitement. If they get it wrong it will say "oops try again". This app doesn't have any options but is still set up nicely with the three pictures on the screen with no complicated directions or interferences. The sound with this app is very clear and easy to understand. There is no mistaking what the sound is from any of the sounds I heard throughout the app. The pictures change with each page and the pages are set up so there is no way back to the menu except the home button. I have found this app is simple, easy to use, and wonderful for teaching sound discrimination and listening skills. Highly highly recommended.

Pros: simple easy to use format
         clear pictures and sounds
         no distractions
        
Cons: no options for more or less pictures
           no scoring (how many correct/incorrect)

https://www.facebook.com/difflearn?sk=wall
http://www.difflearn.com/
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/whats-that-sound-learning/id414716186?mt=8

*** Be sure to check out their other apps: Let's Build a Bedroom, Clean Up: Category Sorting, What Goes Together?, and Tell Me About It! ***

Social Adventures

Social Adventures by all4mychild is a wonderful social skills app. I find this app to be a wonderful resource for parents, teachers, and therapist to learn and teach different activities to children with social skill delays. This app includes 44 activities that can be used in many different settings. There is very clear instructions on how to do each activity along with a separate parent tip section. The visuals are made for children and are designed well for use during role play or as cue cards. There is an 8-week program include with this app as a sample plan to help use this app which especially works well in the classroom setting. Some of you may have seen the app "What's in My Bag?" as a separate app but that too is included in this app. This app also has resources with direct links to other apps that might be helpful for your child or students. This app is an expandable platform app meaning more will and can be added to this app as time goes on through updates. The "Bag" app which is included is a fun two or more player game to help build on social skills. You hide in object in the bag and then the others try to guess what that object is. This helps build on communication and playing with others. I have used the Social Adventures app in addition to my other social skill apps regularly. When combining these apps you have a wonderful mix of learning not only for the parent/teacher but also for the child. Social skills don't come easy for my children and with the help of social skill apps have started to learn how to play with others and start making friends. The Social Adventures app brings a mix of child use and parent/teacher use into the mix making it friendly for both. It reminds me of some of the books you can find that have all these activities in it but instead of a book it's in an app which can be built upon as time goes by. Highly highly recommended :)

https://www.facebook.com/pages/All4mychild/113325848758619?ref=ts
http://all4mychild.com/
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/social-adventures/id468235375?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bag-game/id499757601?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

Bigmouth Sounds

Bigmouth Sounds by Vox Aux is a wonderful app that helps children learn speech sounds. This app has a friendly character to help your child along. This app can be used by the child themselves or with adult help. There is 24 consonant sounds and 12 vowels. Each of the sounds are presented individualy and in words. There is written and spoken instructions throughout the app on how to make each sound. There is also 5 sound-based stories with pictures that are read aloud to encourage listening and repetition of sounds. There is 5 levels of play that work up in difficulty according to how the child is learning the speech sounds. There is a snap game included that works with two spoken sounds that your child is to find two sounds that match. With this game there is also 5 levels of play to best fit your child's needs. When you first open Bigmouth Sounds you come to the menu screen. You will have 4 choices which are: Sound cards, stories, games, and about us. The about us does have links to their website and their email but if you turn off these features on your iPad/iPod you should have no issues with your child ending up some place they should not. The stories that are included are: birthday party, fairground, balloons, park, and friend. The stories are done very well and are very cute. The sounds are brought out throughout the stories to help your child learn the sounds while listening to very cute stories. This app is highly highly recommended :)

Pros: cute and friendly character
         great sounds and very clear
         stories and games
        
Cons: would love for better facial sound prompts (hard to tell how your mouth should be to produce sounds)
           more choices on sounds (th, sh, ect.)

www.voxaux.com/bigmouth
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bigmouth-sounds/id493910782?mt=8