Review: Zebra Paint a free Android app with SLP therapy applications

Here is a review of Zebra Paint, a great app that I use frequently in my sessions.  This is a great coloring app that has lots of great uses.  I use it as a reward, as a subject for language enrichment for working on colors, requests, and following directions.

The app, shown below, has a color strip on the left side where you can add almost any desired color using the palette symbol at the bottom. There are 40 different pictures available ranging from space and nature to cars and dinosaurs.  To color you just touch the color and then touch the area to color and it will fill the area.  This makes for a quick coloring activity, especially for the kids that tend to be very slow or meticulous and have difficulty finishing paper coloring within the reward time left in the session.

If I am using this app for language I generally have children request the drawing they want and have them describe the picture as well as the colors that they are planning to use.  For directions, I will tell the kids that I am not very good at coloring and ask them to color the picture for me following directions of 1, 2 or 3 steps to color it.  This can also address part/whole relationships by asking them to color the wheel of the car/truck, the wing of the airplane, etc...  This is another app that can be easily paired with Skitch by saving your picture.  You could easily tackle "What's wrong" by coloring sky and water odd colors, such as making blue trees and red grass, experiment with it and see what you can come up with!

There are lots of ways to use this creative app that is fully functional on many Android platforms.  Even if you don't have a tablet, this one worked quite well on my Android smart phone as well, which was my main platform before I purchased my Galaxy Tab.  

I hope that this gives you some good ideas for how this app could be incorporated into a language therapy session.  It is simple, quick, and easy to use, and best of all... it's  FREE!  If you come up with any other creative uses or if you try it and like it please comment with you're experiences.