Mommin' It Up!

February 1, 2012

I heart apps!

Can I just tell you how much I love my iPad? It’s pretty awesome. And super-convenient to tote around. And it can do SO many things. But what I honestly love about it the most are the portable, fun, and never-ending learning opportunities that it’s apps provide for my kids.

The photo above is from an awesome app called Faces iMake. (I made it myself! Aren’t I creative!?) It’s only $1.99 and is well worth that and more for the creativity and fun it will bring into your home. With this app, you make silly faces out of everyday things – choose face parts from the toy, music, tools, food, and candy categories. Easily change the size of objects with two fingers, rotate them, add “layers”, color – the possibilities are endless! And, this app can be adapted for therapy easily as well. Learning what group or category objects went was something Sophie and I worked hard on and this app would be a great exercise for learning that skill and a great reward to play when the hard work is done!v But it’s also just a really fun way to play with your kids or to keep them occupied with something that is good for their brain!

This next app was one of the very first I discovered and it is dear to my heart. I think it’s a must for any parent of young kids who has an iPhone or an iPad. It’s called “I Like Books” from Grasshopper Apps and it is 37, yes THIRTY-SEVEN beautiful picture books in one app. And it’s only 99 cents! The books range from “I love Mom” to “I like colors”. The pictures are gorgeous real photos and the narration is bright and cheerful. You can turn the narration off if you want to read the books yourself, or you can even record your own narration in your own voice and change the text if you want to. These books are so awesome for vocabulary and so much more. Sophie loves reading them by herself even though we’ve had them for months. There are so many of them they never get old. A GREAT value!

Finally, I had to mention this great freebie app – Easy Bake Cupcakes. Hasbro cleverly designed this to sell their Easy Bake Ultimate Oven, but it is a GREAT app. My kids l-o-v-e it, it’s very creative, and if you want to use it for speech therapy, super for following multi-step directions. With this app you choose what kind of cupcake you want to make, mix the batter, fill your pan, bake the cupcakes, remove them from the oven, then choose from lots of frostings, toppings, and decorations. THEN of course you get to eat them – and start over for more fun. I highly recommend it!

Those are some of my current favorite apps for kids. The value far outweighs the cost on these! What are some of your favorites? Let’s share!

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I received a code to try Faces iMake for free. But look people, I cannot be bought for $1.99. So the opinions are all my own, and it is a great app! 🙂

January 1, 2012January 1, 2012

Appy New Year: Great Apps from Toca Boca

Getting an iPad has really changed my life. Maybe that sounds dramatic, maybe it IS dramatic, but it’s also true. iPad apps have brought another healthy dimension of play into my life, a new way to share playtime with my kids. So far I’ve reviewed several therapy apps, and several play apps. Toca Boca’s apps fit wonderfully into both categories. They are designed for play but can easily be applied to meet therapy goals and objectives and kids of all abilities will LOVE them. You can check out my previous review of Toca Boca apps here, and now here are a few more to LOVE. All of these are very reasonably priced and worth every penny!

1) Toca Tea Party: A whole new spin on playing tea party! Get your guests (your favorite teddy bear, doll, or action figure!) and postion them next to the iPad. Then choose your tablecloth, place setting, drinks, and even background music. Your guests will let you know when they need a refill on food or drink, or a napkin to clean up! Each party is fast-paced, and your guests will keep you hopping! This is the most wonderful example of pretend play. It gives the child the ability to use his or her imagination as well as follow multi-step directions and practice social skills. As a parent I adore it and so does Sophie.

2) Toca Kitchen: this is the latest and greatest from Toca Boca, and it rocks! Choose a character to cook for, open up the fridge and choose a food, then what manner you’ll cook it in. Will your child grill it, boil it, microwave it, blend it, slice it, or serve it raw? And will their character like it or give it a “BLECCH!”? This app is so much fun! There are so many opportunities to teach categorization, vocabulary, following multi-step directions, and of course it’s great for pretending and using imagination. And it’s fun fun fun. I must say I enjoy cookin’ up a little something in the Toca Kitchen myself! Here’s a short video of Joshua and Sophie playing Toca Kitchen:

3) Paint my Wings: This is a super-fun art app. It allows the user to paint butterfly wings -anything goes – but the paint goes on both wings symmetrically just like a real butterfly! At the end you can take a picture of your fabulous creation. Again this is a great app for teach multi-step directions as well as colors! You can make some really cool wings!

I can’t tell you enough how GREAT these apps are! For any kid!! Most of them are about $2.99 and well worth it. Go to iTunes or the App store and get your Toca Boca on!

November 24, 2011

App Happy: Toca Boca

Let me tell how you much I am LOVING all the apps I am finding for kids these days. Today I am going to tell you about a few from Toca Boca, which aren’t necessarily intended for speech therapy but can definitely be used for that purpose. I bought a couple, loved them, and then asked Toca Boca to let me review a couple more. Sophie and Joshua love playing with these apps and they are just FUN, a great way to play and learn! First up is the Birthday Party app pictured above.

Parentings’ Birthday Party by Toca Boca is a cute little way for your child to have a virtual birthday party. You can play alone or with mom, dad, or siblings and friends. This app lets you choose from 3 types of cake and themed plates so you can set what kind of party you are having. Then, it’s time to pour the juice, serve the cake, blow out the candles, eat it, pop the party poppers, and open the present!

Then after you eat all the cake and drink all the juice (with a touch of your finger), do the dishes and you’re done – so you can start the fun all over again! This app is great for speech: ask your child either what they are doing, what they just did, or have them walk you through the sequence of events verbally. They will have so much fun, they won’t even know they are working on speech!

Next up is probably my favorite of all these I’m reviewing today: Toca Store. This app is fabulously fun! And it’s great for speech, not only for sequencing but for following multi-step directions. Your child can choose from a catalog which items will be sold in their store, then which items they want to buy, and how much each item costs. Then, of course, they need to pay! My kiddos have a great time with this one – there are so many combinations of what to sell and buy, and everything is completely child-controlled! But if you want to work with your child on speech using this app, you can direct the play to encourage following directions, story-telling, and sequencing.

Next up: Toca Hair Salon

Toca Hair Salon is another fun app that both my big kids really enjoy, and once again, has great applications for speech therapy – or is just plain fun to play for any kid. In this app, you choose from six different characters, then you can cut, comb, and style their hair in a variety of ways with a variety of tools! This is another great one to work on sequencing and multi-step directions.

Finally, we have Toca Robot Lab. I love this app! Here your kiddos can build their own robot from a variety of parts – there are tons of possible combinations! Then after the Robot is built, you can take him on a little mission and see how well he works. This is another great app for following directions and sequencing, working on naming body parts, etc. And it’s a little more “boyish” if your speech-delayed boy isn’t all that into the other apps. (But Sophie loves it just as much as Joshua does!)

All the Toca Boca apps are very reasonably priced, I think the most expensive one is $2.99. They are SO worth the money, so if you’ve got an iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, definitely check them out! You can get them at the App store, and check out Toca Boca on Facebook or at their website.

I’m linking this up to Things I love Thursday at the Diaper Diaries. Go check it out!