As we talked about in this post, the iPad can be a useful tool with the right boundaries. Along with being mindful about how you use technology with your child, it’s important to find apps that you can actually use for your child’s language development. Here are a few of The Speech Space’s favorite apps and some ways to work language skills into the technology.
Toca Boca Hair Salon: This app let’s you pick a character and then cut and style their hair. Kids love changing the length, style, and color of hair and seeing all the fun creations they can come up with. This app has so many opportunities to incorporate a ton of adjectives in order to expand your child’s utterances– short, long, curly, wavy, straight, brown, blonde, red, wet, damp, dry…the list could go on and on. This is a slow paced app, which gives you a lot of time to make sure that your child is able to describe their creations.
Pepi Doctor: Your child gets to be the doctor in the this app! They choose what part of the patient they want to help and then they take care of all their ailments. This app is great for working on real-life vocabulary. In addition to vocabulary building there are also opportunities to help your child understand the functions of items; such as, a thermometer is used to take your temperature or the dentist uses the drill to clean your teeth. The Pepi Doctor app gives your child a way to play with instruments in an environment where you can explain more about them. You can also have your child explain to you what they did to help the patient in the game and why the patient needed help. Additionally, this app is good for inferencing and describing.
Peek-a-boo Barn: In this app different farm animals alternate appearing behind the barn doors. They each make their own animal noises (presumably saying “hi!” or “let me out of this barn!”) behind the closed barn door. Before you or your child touch the barn door to let them out, have your child guess which animal they hear (early inferencing skills). Once the door is open you can talk about or ask questions about the animal (e.g., “What did the donkey say?”, “What does an owl do?”, “What does a cow make?”, “What color is the pig?”). This app is great for younger kids working on early inferencing skills, naming animals, answering simple questions, working on putting together 2-4 word phrases (e.g., “Hi Cow.”, “Goodnight Chicken.” , “Open door for Goat.”).
Using apps can be a fun and innovative way to work on building your child’s language skills. However, it is important to remember that children do learn best through real-life engagements and interactions. If you are choosing to use apps with your child make sure you are truly using the apps with them. We’ll add some more of our favorite apps in future blog posts, so come back to check them out!
If you have questions or concerns about your child’s development, contact us at The Speech Space! We offer free screenings, which take approximately 30 minutes, and can help identify potential problems.