App Review: Starfall

I know that many SLP's involved with the schools will be familiar with this app, but for those of you who don't know about it, Starfall is a great reading and phonics app to use in therapy and especially to suggest to parents whose children are having difficulty with reading.

This $2.99 app tackles each sound as well as blends, digraphs and diphthongs.  It is a great starting point or a place for beginning practice in reading and phonics.  I have several children on my schedule who have used this at home and the parents have been very pleased with the app as well.  Additionally, there are free versions at www.starfall.com that also  tackle reading levels from single letters to reading short stories.

Both the app and the website are great additions to your reading repertoire and can be very helpful for parents to try at home.  Also, many of the activities are set up as games so children sometimes don't even realize that they are learning to read.

Give it a try and let parents know about the app as well as the website that is accessible for free!

SLP App Review: iStoryBooks

If you are looking for free books on your tablet iStoryBooks app you should look into.  They have a good collection of simple stories that most kids are familiar with.  One of my clients would request Cindrella at every session, which was great for working on narrative storytelling, prediction, and discussing emotions.

You do need internet access to be able to download the story, so it's not very useful if your tablet isn't tethered, or near wifi, but you can pre-load the story and leave the app open and it will work later.

The writing isn't the best, but the books are enjoyable and most are good for beginning readers (around 2nd grade) or younger if you don't mind supplying/working through the difficult words or just using it for the picture description.  It's also great for working on sequencing as you can take screenshots of the stories to prompt clients after reading or to have them sequence in the correct order.

Overall, this is a good, free book app that has come in very handy when working on reading and narrative storytelling with kids.