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!