Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Sticker Apps One Can Adapt for Language Therapy

Because there are few language therapy dedicated apps, one needs to look for apps that can be adapted to one's language goals. I've found a number of such apps. What I will try to do in my upcoming posts, is highlight these apps and talk about how they can be used in language therapy.

There are a bunch of apps called sticker apps that have a few uses in language therapy. First and foremost, they offer a range of vocabulary. For some apps, one can target descriptives, superlatives, comparisons, actions, prepositions and answering questions. All the apps are interactive in that the child needs to click or drag objects onto a background scene. Objects can be made bigger or smaller (think superlatives) or rotated with two fingers. I have listed the apps from the best to those I will probable delete once this post is published.

Clicky Sticky by Merge Mobile is the best of the bunch. The app offers seven background scenes: outer space, jungle, dinosaurs, airplanes, princess dress-up, underwater, and skiing. Except for the princess dress-up app, all offer some animation and sound effects specific to the scene. The child can start and stop movement of the objects across the screen by tapping on a round red circle. This app can easily be adapted to target colors, vocabulary, prepositions, actions, descriptions and answering questions. Other Clicky Sticky apps are Clicky Sticky Superheroes, Clicky Sticky Trains, and Clicky Sticky Cars, and Clicky Sticky apps for specific holidays. Apps are priced from $.99 to $2.99
Ages: 3-8
Ratings: ++++
Developer's website: Topthatpublishing.com
Cost: $2.99

Dressing Up by TopthatPublishing is another good app. It offers ten male and female cartoon characters each with its own specific background. The child dresses up the character by selecting from a variety of possible articles of clothing. The child can select clothing that matches the scene, as suggested by a sample dressed character in a small box or dress the character as one wishes. Each scene has a short written description of the character. If one taps on the green arrow at the top of the page, the description is read aloud to the child. Tap on a word in the written description and it is read aloud by a narrator. This app can easily be adapted to target colors, vocabulary, descriptions and answering questions.
Ages: 4-8
Ratings: +++
Developer's website: Mergemobile.com
Cost: $2.99


Click Me Stick Me HD Lite by Poldata sp.j. offers one sticker scene, farm animals and objects, and two board games. The full versions offers six scenes: ocean, farm, universe, dinosaurs, pirate, doll world, plus six different board games. The cost is $1.99
Ages: 3-6
Ratings: ++
Developer's website: poldata.p.com
Cost: Free

Tasty Cream by App Minis LLC allows the child to build an ice cream cone. The child selects from a variety of cones, ice cream flavors and toppings. One can work on simple 3 step sequencing with this app. Once the ice cream cone is complete, the child licks it away by swiping a finger on it. One can purchase Tasty Cookies and Tasty Pizza for $.99 each.
Ages: 3-6
Ratings: ++
Developer's website: appminis.com
Cost: Free

Funny Stickers Sea World by Nanny Lalla allows the child to place various underwater creatures in the underwater scene. One has the option of paying $1.99 and downloading the sea, jungle, park and farm scenes.

Ages: 3-5
Ratings: ++
Developer's website: nannylalla.com
Cost: Free

Stamp Touch Stamp Earth Lite by The Being True offers 2 scenes: sky and jungle. For $3.99 one can download ocean, sky, jungle farm, Antarctica and space.
Ages: 3-5
Ratings: ++
Developer's website: thetruebeing.com
Cost: Free

Kid's Poster HD Lite by Pop-ok offers 5 scenes: kid's birthday party, forest, cold penguin habitat, beach, and birthday party. The non-lite version offers the same scenes, so I'm not sure why it costs $.99.
Ages: 3-5
Ratings: ++
Developer's website: pop-ok.com
Cost: Free

Canimals Sticker Book 2HD by Vooz Club is a combination of sticker and puzzle app. The app shows a beach scene (along with music and the sound of the surf and birds). There are some items missing that are outlined in the shape of the missing item. At the bottom of the screen are the items that fit the missing piece. The child needs to drag the item to its matching piece. There are different Canimals Sticker apps that are available for free or $.99.
Ages: 3-5
Ratings: ++
Developer's website: voozclub.com
Cost: Free

Stickers for Kids by Thinkster Apps offers a farm scene on the app I downloaded. This app offers a bit of animation. Touch on the tractor of the farm app and it moves backwards and forwards. Apples fall from the tree, the cloud moves accompanied by a wind sound and the windmill turns when tapped. When an animal sticker is placed on the scene, it makes its sound. Thinkster Apps offers 5 scenes: farm, jungle, prehistoric dinsaurs, and underwater for $.99.
Ages: 3-5
Ratings: ++
Developer's website: not found
Cost: Free

Lite Magic Finger Sticker Book Princess and Cooking by Think Cube offers a dress-up the prince and princess scene and a barbeque scene. The barbeque has two grills, one for grilling the whole fish and the second with skewers for grilling the smaller food pieces. One cannot grill the fish on the skewer grill and vice-verse. Items placed on the "wrong" grill pop off. It seems like the non-lite version offers other cooking options for $1.99.
Ages: 3-5
Ratings: ++
Developer's website: not found
Cost: Free

Elves Dress Up Party by Tab Tale is associated with the book The Elves and the Shoemaker. The app offers one scene with 2 elves. The child places the clothing on the elves until they are fully dressed. There is a color circle that when tapped changes the color of all the clothing at once to the color shown.
Ages: 2-4
Ratings: +
Developer's website: not found
Cost: Free

3 comments:

  1. Hi Mirla,

    I wonder if you can put the apps into categories. A colleague just e-mailed the SLPs in our district, asking about appropriate apps for a 5th grade student to use for /r/ practice at home. Any special ideas?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm glad you asked about putting apps into categories. I was thinking about doing a post on just that topic. An executive decisions has been made to make that the topic of my next post.

    I know that Smarty Ears has an app called /r/ intensive SLP. The description of it states that it is for SLP use. At this point, I would hesitate to buy an app targeting sound production, unless one is looking for standard picture cards. Other than cards, the technology is not yet there to support apps for speech production that utilize the qualities of the iPad.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for the informative article. There are few well-known professionals who provide language disorders therapy in Kolkata. Looking forward to more informative articles from you.

    ReplyDelete