All pictures on this post are courtesy of: Amazon.com

Well this is my first app review as I finally saved enough of my hard earned money to buy a tablet last summer.  I know most people have an iPad as America seems to be an Apple country but I chose an Android compatible tablet for a number of reasons, two of which are that I can sync it with my phone and tablets are undeniably cheaper than iPads.

I see many bloggers out there are iPad lovers and I cannot blame them as there seems to be so many more options for speech pathology apps!  But so far there seems to be few speech bloggers that provide reviews for Android apps and surely there must be more SLPs out there like me who have Android systems right?.  I hope so b/c I thought every now and then I could review an app I use and have found helpful for speech pathology that is available for Android compatible tablets and smart phones.

So here we go!

The first app I’ll be reviewing is Vocabulicious Kinder.

Where:  available via Google Play store or Amazon Apps store (keep in mind if you buy from amazon apps you can transfer your apps between devices as you please…so I try to buy my apps from amazon when I can)

Price: $0.99

What:  this is a simple vocabulary app in which a child is asked to choose a named object from 2 or 4 images.  The vocabulary words are separated into the following categories: animals, more animals, fruit, plants, shapes, world landmark, household, sports, senses and feelings, body, seasons and nature, careers, space, continents and oceans, comparisons, more comparisons, helping at home, insects and spiders.

Other ways to use this app: there are numerous ways you could use this app to target language or social goals:

• You could also turn off the sound track and show pictures asking your students to identify an appropriate category or how these items are alike or different.
• You can ask your students to desribe pictures by attributes by another student guesses or can have they describe actions of persons in the pictures if working on using complete sentences.
• You can also ask various WH?s about each picture if your student is working on that skill as well.
• You can work on social goals and being a good sport as well as turn taking while playing the game.
• Obviously, like all good language activities articulation at the phrase, sentence and conversation levels can be targeted during the above activities as well.

Who:  I think this app is great for all of our vocabulary deficient kiddos, kiddos working on categories and semantic organizations, students who are working on following directions and simple auditory memory and visual discrimination.

Some nice features:  This can be a multiplayer game (up to 4 players) and each child’s score if kept by the number of stars they recieve.  Out of 12 trials the scoring system is as such:  0 stars=<9 incorrect answers, 1 star=6-8 incorrect answers, 2 stars=1-5 incorrect answers, 3 starts=0 incorrect answers.  You can choose to have the soundtrack on or off and give your own directions.  You can choose to display 2 or 4 items depending on your students visual discrimination abilities and impulsivity and can use all caps or lowercase for the fonts.

Overall impression:  I like this app for its use of common and more uncommon vocabulary words.  I love the 12 categories and how this app incorporates some science terms as well (space and weather).  I also think this app can be used for any age of child that is struggling with vocabulary and semantic organizations.  Best part is its simple to use and very cheap.