Home language activities using iPad photo apps

Photos (especially those taken on the spot) always seem to be an successful resource for communicating with children. It might have something to do with the way that the child can be engaged with the creation of the activity, as well as starring in the results.

I recently wrote a blog on using iPad videos and photos to support language development without the need for any apps. Here are some more ideas for home which involve photo editing apps or apps into which you can insert photos.

Photo Grid (free)

A great way of editing photos with speech bubbles, text and colour. This is a creative way of looking at photos of an outing or holiday. If you have photos saved in the photos section of your iPad, it makes it very easy to edit.

You can choose a few photos to make into a grid or choose to work with one at a time. Talk about the pictures by guessing what people in the photos were saying or decide what title to give each picture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doodle cast (£1.99)

A lovely app where you can annotate photos which you take on the spot. Start recording and draw pictures on the photo. Then play back the video of it happening.

A lovely one for taking turns to give each other instructions e.g. ‘Draw a blue hat on my head’.

Also try talking back over the video using basic sequence e.g. ‘first, I drew the hat and then I added some red shoes’

Pho.to lab (free)

A range of professional looking special effects for photos including magazine covers, montages and interesting backgrounds. Insert a photo of you or your child into the app and choose a design. You could invent a story around it  e.g. ‘how I came to be on the cover of Vogue’ or ‘why my photo is on a £10 note’.

You need a wifi connection while using this one.

 

 

 

 

Abricot jigsaws (free) – making a photo into a jigsaw. See earlier blog.

Shadow Puppet (free). There are a number of story telling apps for which photos can form a central focus – see my earlier blog on story telling with your child.

One that I’ve recently found is Shadow Puppet. It’s very easy to move between photos and talk about them rather than having to record an individual message for each photograph. For example, I created a mini video about a trip to see the book benches in London by flicking through the photos and recording a voiceover narrative at the same time. Very user friendly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

General tips for using photos:

• Whenever the app asks you whether you will allow access to photo library, say ‘yes’. You will sometimes need to change the privacy settings under settings/general if this is not set up.

Using your iPad for story telling with your child using free apps

Narrative skills are an essential part of children’s language development. Young children learn to structure stories and put events in sequence by talking about things they have done and seen. These skills support their ability to create their own imaginative stories as their talking develops.

Below are some ideas for (mostly) free apps which you can use to support your child’s narrative and story telling skills from a very early language stage onwards. Some of them allow you to record a story bit by bit and play it back at the end and others provide visual prompts to help you let your imagination run wild!

 

Story Creator  

How to use: This app can help develop a child’s story telling skills by supporting them to retell stories of things that have happened. Whenever you are having an exciting day out or doing something interesting at home, think about taking photos/videos on the iPad and creating a story about it afterwards. Make up a story when you get back and tell another family member about what you saw or play them your recording.

• Click on the + and Add New Story.
• Give the story a name and add a photo for the front cover.
• Click on Add new page symbol to add new pictures to the story.
• Click on the microphone picture to add a recording.

 

Imagistory

How to use: This is a wordless picture book to encourage you and your child to make up a story yourselves.

• Click on Create and choose one of the two free stories available.
• You can either fill in your name and take a photo first, or just go to Quiet Read to start the story.
• Talk about what is happening and swipe left to move between pages.
• Read the story again and again and use new words each time!

 

 

 

 

Story Time Sounds

How to use: This is a great resource of sound effects which you can incorporate into your stories. A motivating resource for story telling and a few prompts to help develop the plot…

• Choose a category e.g. Space, Lost World etc.
• Choose a sound to mark the beginning of your story.
• Take turns to choose a sound and say what is happening next using that sound!

 

Puppet pals

Cost: free for basic version/ £1.99 to add your own photos

How to use: You can use this app to make up a story about you, your child and fictional characters at the same time. You can record the story while moving the characters around on the screen.

• Either choose ‘actors’ from the menu or click on ‘Add actor from photo.’
• Choose a background scene (you can also Add backdrop from photo).
• Use the scale in the bottom left hand corner to make the picture fill the screen and move the characters about.
• Click the red button to record a story and save to the iPad using the disk symbol.

Suggestions for activities:

• Take photos of you, your child and your home. Create a movie about something you have been doing that week.
• Make a short movie to show your child and then let them do the talking.
• Make up a story using photos of your child’s favourite toys.
• Dress up and take photos of yourselves, then make them into a movie that you can show other people.

 

Story Wheel Lite

How to use: This ‘Spin the Wheel’ app allows you to record a story and helps you decide on a character to talk about next. You can use this app as a tool for creating stories with more than one person.

•  Click on Create a Story. You will need to fill in your names before you continue.
• Select a theme from Pirates, Story Teller, Knights and Princesses etc.
• The first person spins the wheel to show a character.
• Record a short sentence or two about this character as the first part of the story.
• Press Next Player and spin again.
• When you have completed creating a story, press Done
• Say Yes to saving and then Listen to Story.

Free apps for working with children who have speech difficulties and dysarthria

I’ve recently been experimenting with some new apps in Speech and Language Therapy sessions for both primary and secondary aged children who have either speech difficulties or dysarthria. I found the following (and all free!) apps to be helpful in my therapy sessions:

Singing Fingers HD. This app allows you to draw a squiggle, line or picture while recording your voice at the same time. You can then run your finger along the line to play back the recording. This app proved useful in assessment as a motivating way of asking a student to demonstrate pitch glides.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Voice Changer Lite. This app was useful for eliciting short sample phrases from students – you can record a short phrase and then play them back in different modes e.g. “helium” or “alien”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bla Bla Bla and Sensory Speak Up. Great apps for encouraging voice exercises. Bla Bla Bla has a choice of faces, which change according to the volume of the speaker. I also used it as a tool during oro-motor assessments with younger children.

A quiet voice

A very loud voice

 

 

 

 

 

The Sensory Speak Up app gives visual feedback when trying to sustaining a long vowel sound.  This made it possible to set visual targets for students e.g. sustaining a note for half the screen.

The bars appear evenly with a good sustained sound

A non sustained note with breaks in breathing

 

 

 

 

 

Ocarina. I used this app to support therapy for breath control. The difference between a long sustained note and a quick breath creates a difference in the music created so provides a relatively motivating target.

Parent ideas for communication activities using iPad photos and videos – no apps needed

The iPad camera is a fantastic tool for promoting communication which doesn’t even require you to use any apps.

Below are three ideas to get you started at home:

Making a movie (Using language to make plans)

• Plan the shooting of a short ‘movie’ together using the iPad video function
• Talk about Who will be in the movie, What they will be doing and Where it will take place
• The movie can be anything from a short video of your child singing a song or jumping on a trampoline, to an acted out sequence. It doesn’t need to involve any words – it’s the planning that can inspire discussion!

Do and Tell  (Using language to give instructions)

• Choose an activity to do together e.g. making a collage, building a tower or baking a cake.
• Take several photos on the iPad which break down the activity into several clear stages and talk about it as you go. Save the photos in a folder with the name of the activity.
• A few hours, days or even weeks later, ask your child to tell another family member how to do it using the photos as a prompt.

The emphasis in this activity is that your child is using their language to tell someone else how to do something but the photos give them a visual prompt and help them describe the steps in the sequence.

 

What is it? (Using language to problem-solve)

• Take turns to take a photo of something difficult to identify in your house: the underneath of the kitchen table, the inside of a vase or behind a door. The more obscure the better!
• The other person asks questions to help them guess what it might be.

Ideas for speech and language therapy activities using iPad videos and photos

Time for a blog on my favourite iPad tool – taking photos and videos.

As long as you have an iPad 2 or more recent, you’ll have an inbuilt camera which makes it incredibly easy to use photos in activities with children (and you can delete them at the end of the session if there are any difficulties with consent).

Here are a few ideas for short language based group or individual activities using the camera function which don’t even require you to download any apps.

Attention activity – What’s different?

• Take a photo of a person, room or area.
• Change one thing about it or them and take another photo.
• Ask the children to work out what has changed.

This provides an easy attention activity without having to rely on children closing their eyes!

 

 

 

 

Social skills activity – Guess the emotion

A quick activity for a social skills group exploring different emotions.

• Ask each child to make a facial expression and take a photo.
• Show the photo to the group and talk about what the expression might mean.

Expressive and receptive activity – Listen and Make

• Ask someone to carry out a simple activity, e.g. making a collage, building a tower or threading beads.
• Take several photos which break down the activity into several clear stages.
• Show the photos to one child and ask them to convey the instructions to another child without showing them the pictures.
• Compare the end photo with the finished product.

The emphasis in this activity is on one child using their language to tell the other child how to do something. In addition, the other child can develop skills in listening to their peers. The art/craft activities work particularly well with younger children who are not confident with colours and preposition words. Examples of stages from a few different activities below:

 

 

 

 

 

Expressive and receptive activity – What’s happening?

I’ve already blogged about this in the past but worth repeating here as this is a tool I use regularly.

• Take a short video of a real or acted out scenario and ask the group questions about it. It could be a video of a busy road on your way to work, a video tour of a supermarket aisle or an acted out scenario by a teacher who has discovered her bike is broken.
• Show the video, ask Wh questions and talk about what could happen next.

There are plenty more ways of using photos and videos – please share any other ideas you might have tried!

iPad apps using preposterous pictures and ridiculous words to encourage talking

Bizarre situations are brilliant for inspiring conversation among children so I had a look for apps which incorporate this kind of theme. Flip flap farm (£0.99) is an app which tells you what would happen if a number of farm animals were combined with others e.g. a pig + mouse is a Pouse and a goat + turkey is a Gurkey. As well as the whimsical aspect of it, the emphasis on making up words and word play is another great way to develop language skills.

You can swipe both the top and bottom halves of the animal to create a new creature. There’s a poem to go with it but there’s also a ‘read by myself’ setting which might work better if you’re trying to talk about it together with your child. After you’ve shown your child a few different examples, try and pick two animals and guess what the combined word is going to be. Encourage your child to play around with the word and have fun coming up with weird and outlandish ideas.

Another similar app is Herd Absurd (free) which allows you to blend three different animals into one but doesn’t give them a name like in Flip Flap Farm. See if you can concoct some words yourselves!

Look out for other apps which create ridiculous pictures or scenarios – they will always give you something to talk about!

Using interactive iPad apps for early language assessment

I’m a big fan of interactive apps (and indeed books or games) that encourage children to comment spontaneously on what is happening. The Wonderkind Toddler’s Seek and Find apps were a recent discovery on the iPad of a friend’s toddler. The free ones (Animal Circus, My Zoo Animals, My Little Town) are all pretty good and give you plenty to work with even though not all of the scenes are available unless you pay a bit more. A bit like My PlayHome, they are all interactive scenes. You can’t move the characters around but when you touch them, something happens e.g. the camel spits at the man, the woman flips a pancake etc.

I particularly like the range of activities that happen as even a child with only a few basic words will be able to say something about it.

I regularly use this kind of app in informal assessments with preschool children, especially when formal assessments are not appropriate because of attention span or level. They could also work well for the younger primary ages. I keep the apps in the same folder on the iPad and ask the child to choose one. I then demonstrate a few of the the activities and talk about them simply – usually the child follows my lead and starts doing the same. Be warned – you can’t usually move on to another activity until they have had a chance to activate every single element of each scene.

Creating your own iPad photo jigsaws as a starter for conversation

When your child is learning new words, they learn both by listening to the word and by using it over and over again themselves. Doing a jigsaw can be a fun way of talking about a picture but doing the same one again and again can leave limited opportunities for expanding vocabulary.

Abricot Games – Puzzle (free) is the most user friendly app I’ve found for uploading your own photographs or pictures and converting into a jigsaw. It can convert photos into 12, 20 or 36 piece puzzles. The app has a number of pictures already built in – worth trying first to see if your child likes the app and if he/she enjoys talking about the pictures. If you want to create your own, try the following:

• Think of a topic or picture you want to talk about
• Go to Puzzle Creator on the home page.
• Either click on the camera picture to take a picture then and there…
• …Or click on the Photos button to select a picture from your photo library. You could in theory use any image you like by taking a screen shot from the internet (for screen shots, press down the start button and then press the home button briefly).
• Select the size of jigsaw you want and click on the picture to get going

It’s an easy way of initiating talking with your child about any image you like. It might be a useful way of introducing abstract concepts such as emotions and could also be a useful way for consolidating curriculum vocabulary for older children.

Using sensory apps as PECs motivators

When I first got an iPad, the apps with easy touch-activated sounds and visual effects (examples below) were the first ones I downloaded. They are fantastic as basic cause and effect activities and are highly motivating for children of a range of ages and abilities.

It took me a while to think of a way to use them for language based activities with children at a higher level. Then it struck me that if you think of the iPad and its sensory apps as a motivating toy in the same way as SLTs think of ‘bubbles’, it makes it much easier to fit into language activities.

I work in a school with a large number of children with ASD, where iPads are an obvious motivator for communication. The sensory apps work well when encouraging use of PECs across the day and in different situations.

How to use in class:

• I started by using sensory apps in a communication group with two or three students who were using PECs to communicate.
• Each student was given a selection of symbols in their PECs book for familiar apps so they could initiate requests for what they wanted.
• When a student initiated a request for an app, I set up a timer (see previous blog) for 15-20 seconds before handing the iPad over. This gave a clear auditory signal at the end of their turn on the iPad itself.
• I then waited for another student to initiate another request.

You could make this into a small group turn taking activity by connecting the ipad to the whiteboard (see blog on airserver for how to do this) so that the other students could watch the apps on the whiteboard as they waited for their turn.

Some of my (and my students’) favourite (and mostly free) sensory apps:

• Pocket pond
• Fireworks Arcade
• Fluidity HD
• Cause and Effect Sensory Light Box (£1.49)
• Falling Stars
• Romantics
• Reactickles Magic
• Paint Sparkle
• iZen
• Bubbles (£0.69)
• Music Sparkles

Using iPad timers for children with autism

Using iPads interactively (the theme of this blog) is all very well but we often find that children are often more than happy to play with the iPad on their own without any adult interference.

I’ve often used iPad timer apps at school with children who have autism as they often benefit from clear visual and sound prompts to help them understand what is expected of them. It has been helpful to give a warning of when I plan to use the iPad with them and when they are allowed to use it on their own.

An iPad based signal can be more effective than any verbal or other visual warnings when a child is already focused on the iPad itself. It also works wonders when trying to encourage children to take turns sharing the iPad with each other.

My favourites are ASD timer and Sand Timer (both free). You can set for any period of minutes/seconds and there is a noise when time is up (regardless of which app you are using at the time). Both of the apps above allow you to choose the ‘time up’ noise from a range of bleeps and tunes.

The iPad timer doesn’t just need to be a timer for iPad activities. You could also use it as a visual for other activities at home and at school e.g. ‘time for brushing teeth’ or ‘time until play has finished’.

Watching the clock hand moving round or the sand filtering down can help a child understand what is next in a concrete and visual way. This can be much more effective than saying “in 5 minutes” to a child who has difficulty understanding what that means.