Favorite Apps of a Dozen School Based OTs: Visual Motor/Visual Perceptual, pt. 3

This is part three of Favorite Apps of a Dozen School Based OTs. You can read part one here, and part two here.

Visual Motor:

Dexteria: $3.99, Refer to my blog article. Dexteria is a set of therapeutic hand exercises (not games) to improve fine motor skills and handwriting readiness in children and adults. Dexteria’s unique hand and finger activities take full advantage of the multi-touch interface to help build strength, control, and dexterity.

Just Find It: $0.99. You are presented two images almost identical but at most 4 different spots. If you find all the differences in each stage before the countdown timer runs out, the remained time will be added to your score. Be careful! Wrong spot means time penalty! But you will be relieved to know that some unused item is left!

Bugs & Buttons

Bugs & Buttons: $2.99. Bugs and Buttons 2 seamlessly incorporates numbers, letters, patterns, shapes and so much more into 18 exciting games and activities. Use a rubber band to bounce falling buttons and acorns away from a parade of marching metallic green beetles. Fine-tune your motor skills in a high-speed race on a remote-controlled car gaining speed boosts, avoiding obstacles, and running competitors off the road. Practice your listening skills in a fun game of “Simon Says” with a funky, button covered puppet! Learn to play popular tunes or record songs of your own with a working keyboard. Guess the shape as a water bug creates geometric ripples on a gorgeous, three dimensional, babbling brook.

Visual Perceptual:

Injini

Shape Builder: $2.99. Shape Builder educates & entertains your little one with easy to move shapes that snap into place on top of silhouette puzzles. Each puzzle has 5 to 10 pieces & after positioning all of the pieces, the real image is revealed along with a professional voice recording of the word spoken by a licensed speech therapist that specializes in early child development. Shape Builder encourages cognitive thinking & fine motor skills plus exposes young minds to new music instruments, animals, produce, objects & the alphabet in a fun & engaging format with LOTS of sound effects!

ShapePuzzle: Free, Shape Puzzle is a jigsaw puzzle especially designed for little children. After you complete a picture, a cute turtle will pops out and tell you the name of the object you just assembled. What's more, each object belongs to a certain scene and after you finish all the items, a vivid scene appears!

Injini: $29.99, 10 feature games with 90 puzzles, over 100 beautiful illustrations, 8 farm-themed mini-games and more. Injini is ideally suited for early intervention - it brings fun to learning and at the same time practices children’s fine motor and language skills, understanding of cause and effect, spatial awareness, memory and visual processing.


Kids Can Match - Animals...: Free, An interactive, adaptive and fun memory game for children of all ages. This app contains an amazing, one of a kind, collection of over 70 authentic animal images and sounds.

Happy Therapy!

Favorite Apps of a Dozen School Based OTs: Story Telling and Typing (pt. 2)

Hey Tek-Ninjas, this is part two of Favorite Apps of a Dozen School Based OTs. You can read part one here.

Story Telling:

Pictello

Pictello: $19.99, Everyone loves to tell fun, engaging, and imaginative stories. Go ahead and make a social story or visual schedule for a child with autism or a slide show of holiday pictures for your friends - Pictello makes it a breeze to create and share! Whether you use the included natural-sounding Text to Speech voices, or record your own voice, Pictello is the perfect tool for visual storytelling.

Toontastic: Free, Refer to my blog article. Toontastic is a creative storytelling app that enables kids to draw, animate, and share their own cartoons with friends and family around the world.

Comic Life

Comic Life: $4.99, Refer to my blog article. Comic Life isn't just for creating comics.

You can retell a family vacation or capture a special day using your photos. It's simple to do: just drag photos onto the page and add your text in speech balloons and captions.

Voice Dictation with Siri: Standard on iPhone 4s or later, iPad 3rd gen or later, iPad mini, and iPod Touch (5th gen). Siri seems to work better with my students then some of the most expensive voice dictation software. Good blog article here. 

Typing:

Pictello: $19.99, Everyone loves to tell fun, engaging, and imaginative stories. Go ahead and make a social story or visual schedule for a child with autism or a slide show of holiday pictures for your friends - Pictello makes it a breeze to create and share! Whether you use the included natural-sounding Text to Speech voices, or record your own voice, Pictello is the perfect tool for visual storytelling.

Abilipad: $19.99. Refer to my blog article. Abilipad is a customizable keyboard and adaptive notepad, with word prediction and text-to-speech.

Snaptype: Free, Refer to my blog article. SnapType helps students keep up with their peers in class even when their penmanship holds them back. Students can easily complete school worksheets with the help of an iPad or iPhone.

Turbo Type

Typing JR: $ 0.99. The fish are swimming towards a shark. You'll have to save the fish by typing in the word, before they get eaten by the shark. Fun and hectic game for the kids, where they learn how to typ.

Turbo Type: $1.99. Race to the finish and turbocharge your iPhone typing skills!  Battle the ruthless CPU opponent in a no-holds-barred typing race across expansive retro-styled scenery and environments, attempting to keep up with the randomly generated sentences and stay ahead of the enemy racer by avoiding deadly mistakes.

Be on the look out for part three of this blog soon.

Happy Therapy!

Favorite Apps of a Dozen School Based OTs: Letters/Writing/Drawing Practice (pt. 1)

Hey Tek-Ninjas, back in June of 2012 I wrote a blog titled “Favorite Occupational Therapy Apps”. Several years later, it remains one of my most consistently visited blog pages.

Many of the apps are still some of my favorite, however I am not working directly as an OT anymore. Instead, I am serving my district solely as an Assistive Technology Professional.

Recently a colleague sent an email out to the Occupational Therapists in our district, asking what were their 3 most often utilized iPad apps.

I plan to share the responses in a four part blog.

This is not necessarily my endorsement, but rather the endorsements of several very skilled and experienced Occupational Therapists working directly in a public school setting. 

Letter/Writing/Drawing Practice: 

iWriteWords

Letter School: $4.99, Play to learn how to write all letters of the alphabet: abc - xyz and the numbers 1-10 with LetterSchool. Kids practice essential skills as they play four exciting games per letter or number.

Handwriting Without Tears: $6.99, Make handwriting practice fun! With our Wet-Dry-Try Suite App, children learn and practice correct formation habits for writing capitals, numbers, and lowercase letters. The app simulates our Slate Chalkboard and Blackboard with Double Lines and helps children learn handwriting skills in the easiest, most efficient way. The result truly is handwriting without tears!

Doodle Buddy: Free, Doodle Buddy Gold is the most fun you can have with your finger! Finger paint with your favorite colors and drop in playful stamps. Connect with a friend to draw together over the Internet.

WriteMyName

Write My Name: $3.99, Write My Name is a fun way for children to practice writing letters, words, names and phrases. Write My Name supports children ages 4 through 6 to learn how to write their name, trace uppercase and lowercase letters, and write over 100 familiar sight/Dolch words. Write My Name meets some of the basic reading and writing Common Core State Standards for kindergarten such as the introduction and mastery of print and word recognition concepts.

Snaptype: Free, Refer to my blog article. SnapType helps students keep up with their peers in class even when their penmanship holds them back. Students can easily complete school worksheets with the help of an iPad or iPhone.

Ready to print: $9.99, Ready to Print progresses through the pre-writing skills in a specific order, so that children can master the visual-motor, visual-perceptual, and fine motor skills necessary for correct printing patterns. It is designed to teach children the correct patterns for printing, and to avoid bad habits that are difficult to change as the child gets older.  

iWriteWords: $2.99, Refer to my blog article. iWriteWords teaches your child handwriting while playing a fun and entertaining game.

Look for the second installment soon.

Happy Therapy!

OT Problems, OT Rap about Occupational Therapy

Too cool for my fellow OT's out there!

More Birds Out of the Box...

Remember Ruth Morgan of Chapel Hill Snippets? Remember how she finds therapy in the Angry Birds app for her and her fellow Speech Pathologists?

Well recently my Physical Therapist (Chelsea) showed me a pizza she made for a friend... It's an Angry Bird!

Imagine the therapeutic possibilities! Individual pizzas for all the group members. Step-by-step picture instructions. Fine motor, visual processing, motor planning, measuring, and the list of therapeutic goals go on!  And of course, while the pizzas are cooking, let's play Angry Birds!

What you need:

Individual Pizza Crusts
Sauce,
Mozzarella Cheese
American Cheese (for the beak)
Pepperoni
Mushrooms
Olives
Oven
iPads or iTouches to play Angry Birds

I'm seeing great collaboration possibilities between the the Speech Therapist and Occupational Therapist, integrating both Ruth's book and the pizza creation in a small group.

Happy Therapy!