Helpful Speech Therapy IPad Applications For Parents

Written By: Elissa Murnick M.S. CCC-SLP Certified Speech Language Pathologist, Director Murnick Speech & Language Associates

The IPad is a great resource for parents who have children with Speech and/or Language difficulties. It can provide a motivating way for a child to practice his/her skills that were learned in therapy and give a child a chance to improve progress. There are applications available for all potential areas of communication impairment such as: Articulation, Phonology, Stutteirng, Oral Motor Skills, Auditory Processing skills, Receptive Language/Auditory Processing, Expressive Language, Apraxia of Speech and Narrative Language. A Speech Language Pathologist will often incorporate the IPad into therapy and when he/she does, working on the same applications that were used in individual sessions can provide a child with another opportunity to practice. It is usually recommended that parents practice the skills with their child rather than just handing them the IPad for independent work.  There are hundreds of available IPad applications at the Apple or Android store and it can be overwhelming to decide on the best one for your child. It can be costly to download applications that may not be beneficial or well designed so recommendations are always helpful.  As a Speech Language Pathologist, the IPad has served as a valuable therapy tool to target multiple Speech and Language goals for multiple students. I have downloaded all of the applications below and researched which applications are best to target skills and provide motivation. Below are a list and description of recommended IPad applications broken down by disorder type.

Articulation Ipad Applications

• Webber Photo Articulation Castle Pro by Super Duper Inc. $39.99

This application provides a child with opportunity to practice his/her error sounds and contains a full sound library. Multiple sound goals can be entered for the child and is divided by position (initial, medial, final), syllables and word, phrase or sentence level). The application will collect data during each session. Various games can be played to practice the target sounds such as "Balloon Pop", "Duck Derby" or "Fishing Rodeo". There is also a free version available to try without the full sound library)

 For more recommended Articulation IPad applications, visit Ipad applications on my website.

Phonology Ipad Applications

This is a great Phonological application and the companion to the articulation app ArtikPix.  PhonoPix will help a child reduce the occurrence of phonological processes in his/her speech and aim to improve overall intelligibility. This application has flashcard and matching activities with minimal pairs (i.e. “tea” and “key”) to contrast the child’s incorrect responses with the target responses. PhonoPix targets the following Phonological Processes: Prevocalic Voicing, Devoicing, Final Consonant Deletion, Fronting, Consonant Blend Reduction, Gliding (“l” and “r” sounds), Stopping, Backing and Initial Consonant Deletion. Children view the minimal pairs in double-sided flashcards by flicking through an album and tapping an around button. In the matching activity, children can match the minimal pairs in three different levels: Easy, medium and hard. During the flashcard and matching activities, a child can practice by listening to the recorded audio clips and can record their own voice  to help them self-correct. Data collection is available to help parents monitor progress.

For more recommended Phonology IPad applications, visit Ipad applications on my website.

 Oral Motor Ipad Applications

• Smart Oral Motor by Smarty Ears $9.99

This application provides practice for children with weakend Oral Motor Skills.  These children may have difficulty with strength and range of motion of certain parts of their mouth such as lips and tongue which can impact their ability to produce certain sounds. This application can help carryover skills learned in Speech Therapy.  The animated duck, provides auditory and visual cues for practicing several Oral Motor exercises such as:

Puckering the lips, making an “O” with the mouth, sending a kiss, moving the tongue to the sides, puffing the cheeks, touching the cheeks using the tongue and moving the tongue up and down. This application includes a total of fifteen Oral Motor exercises, auditory information and animations. Parents have the ability to adjust the number of repetitions per movement.

 For more recommended Oral Motor IPad applications, visit Ipad applications on my website.

 Apraxia of Speech Ipad Applications

•  Linguisystems Apraxia Cards  by Linguisystems $24.99

This application provides practice to children with Developmental Apraxia of Speech (DAS). These children can be non-verbal, have unintelligible speech, have inconsistent sound error patterns, have motor planning problems for speech or have difficulty saying multi-syllabic words. This application contains phonetically controlled words which allows the parent to introduce one element at a time. The cueing hierarchy increases demands on motor planning. Children progress from basic syllable sequences to multi-syllabic word production in sentences. This app works on auditory discrimination and listening.

For more recommended Apraxia IPad applications, visit Ipad applications on my website.

Stuttering/Fluency Ipad Applications

• Fluency Tracker by Smarty Ears  $9.99

This application is designed for children who stutter and parents of children who stutter. The ultimate goal is to produce more fluent speech, positive feelings about speech, and reduce avoidance behaviors that tend to co-exist with stuttering. Children can track changes in the frequency of stuttering, changes in avoidance behaviors, and feelings associated with speaking. Children or parents can enter the times they stutter throughout the day and where and with whom he/she stuttered. A record of this information can be kept over time. Children/parents can also enter every time they avoided speaking due to fear of stuttering, and the situations in which this behavior occurred. Users can track feelings towards speech on a particular day. Fluency Tracker will develop a profile in which it displays a graph of changes in speaking behaviors (Avoidance behaviors, moments of dysfluency and feelings towards speech). Fluency Tracker can also measure the frequency of disfluency per minute. Children who stutter may measure in a conversation how many times the person stuttered in a given conversation time.

 For more recommended Fluency/Stuttering IPad applications, visit Ipad applications on my website.

 Expressive Language Ipad Applications

• First Phrases by Hamaguchi Apps $9.99

This application is designed to help children with Language Impairment to improve overall sentence length, structure and complexity through imitation. The child can select the character(s) to play with or the program will select them randomly.   The narrator instructs the child to tell the character what to do. For example, if a mouse is selected, the child is told, “Tell the mouse what to do.”  In the normal mode, the child then touches each part of the phrase, in order. As each word/part is touched, a pre-recorded voice says the words. The child is coached by the narrator to “do it again” until the desired number of repetitions is achieved.  After the child activates the phrase the selected number of times, the character then indicates he/she will perform the desired action.  The child can then listen to the recording of   their voice and watch the animation again, or try recording again.  

For more recommended Expressive Language IPad applications, visit Ipad applications on my website.

 Receptive Language/Auditory Processing Ipad Applications

• Fun With Directions HD & More Fun With Directions HD by Hamaguchi Apps for Speech, Language & Auditory Development $9.99

This application practices listening, following directions, spatial concepts, auditory memory and auditory processing. There are simple directions (“touch the cat”) and more complex (“with your orange crayon, color the large one that is a furry pet and likes to chase mice”). This app is a great choice for a toddler/preschooler, or any young child who would like to practice listening to or reading directions. Included are ten concepts: Give, touch, open, close, top, middle, bottom, push, color, erase. Another feature is the optional “Superstar Direction” which allows additional practice for remembering (“What did you have to do?”) but also targets expressive language. The child’s response is recorded and played back.  

For more recommended Receptive Language IPad applications, visit Ipad applications on my website.

 Narrative Language Ipad Applications

• Super Duper Story Maker  by Super Duper Publications  $4.99

This application helps a child create all the picture and photo stories they want and tell them over and over. A child can also and make his/her own photo albums, special occasion cards, comic books, etc. This  application can help a child  practice learning skills, such as reading, sequencing, vocabulary and sentence building, following directions, grammar, storytelling and retelling, interacting with others, and more. StoryMaker contains “Create Story” and “Tell Story” screens. In “Create Story” he/she can make independent stories, and edit or change them. In “Tell Story” the child reads or talks about his/her stories. There is also an option for a child to record his/her own voice and  have others listen to their stories. Children can practice the following language skills: Vocabulary, recognizing objects, sentence making, reading, spelling, sentence completion, grammar, articulation and phonology, story building, listening and story retell and social skills.

For more recommended Narrative Language IPad applications, visit Ipad applications on my website

 Pragmatic Language/Social Skills Ipad Applications

• Social Skills Builder Lite $2.99  & Social Skills Builder Full  $12.99 by Social Skills Builder Inc.   

For the lite version, additional video clips of each of these settings can be purchased individually for $1.99 each. These video scenarios are of real interactions of common settings (i.e. preschool) and demonstrate typical social interactions with their friends and other grownups. The purpose of the video clips is to improve social thinking, language and behavior essential to common social situations. Ultimately, the child should improve in his/her understanding of social language skills in the areas of: Friendship/life skills, understanding emotions, critical thinking, problem solving and perspective taking.  

 For more recommended Pragmatics/Social Skills IPad applications, visit Ipad applications on my website.

Elissa Murnick is a licensed, certified Speech Language Pathologist and the owner of Murnick Speech & Language Associates in Fairfield, CT. She has worked for almost 15 years with children of all ages with a wide range of Speech and Language disorders in a public and private school setting as well as private practice. For more information about scheduling an evaluation visit Murnick Speech & Language Associates on the web at www.murnickspeechandlanguage.com