App review: Wombi Ice Cream Lite

I have recently fallen in love with the free and lite version of this great app Wombi Ice Cream Lite .  It is super cute and deals with a subject that most kids love: Ice Cream!

What is so great about this app?  It can be fantastic for following directions, giving directions, understanding negatives (the one that is not...) and memory.  I have found that nearly all my kids will request this as a reward once they've played it once, which makes for a great way to sneak in some more practice for their memory and following directions in a fun and creative way.

The idea is that there is a cast of three characters who place orders at your ice cream shop.  There are five flavors of ice cream and five cones and cups and you are responsible for figuring out what the person wants. It begins with simple orders of one flavor and continues to get more complex.

The only complaint that I have for this app is that it can be tricky to get more than one flavor to stick on the cones and you have to be sure to stack the second and third scoops to the sides to be able to pile on a fourth and fifth scoop.  This issue aside, I love this app.  I had purchased the full version, but I found that for following directions, having so many choices (an additional 5 flavors plus toppings) was just too much distraction.  It was fun just to play, but just got a little too complex for my younger crowd.

A very fun app that can be an excellent way to work in some memory and following directions in sessions or at home!

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.