by Becca Eisenberg | Jun 27, 2017 | Becca's App Reviews, Literacy |
Do you want to teach your young child Baby Sign Language? This free app, Baby Sign Language Dictionary-Lite is an excellent way to introduce your child to baby sign language.
This Baby Sign Language App allows the child an opportunity to learn some simple and functional signs for more effective communication. The full version of this app includes 340 signs and over 1 hour of video instruction. This app includes 40 signing video demonstrations and is easy to follow along. According to the app developer, “The keyword signs demonstrated in this video dictionary are based on American Sign Language (ASL). All signs have been carefully selected for their ease of use, helpfulness to carers and appropriateness for baby’s interests and daily routine.”
Each sign contains a detailed video tutorial with simple instructions on how to perform the sign, tips to help you remember the sign and practical suggestions on how to introduce the sign to your baby. Various categories included in this app are action words, animals, colors, daily routines, feelings and emotions, food, manners and behavior, nature and much more. Within the settings, you can choose to see the single sign only, autoplay, autoplay, and shuffle or manual transition and shuffle.
These are a few suggestions to use this app with Bluebee Pals
- Connect your Bluebee Pal to your device and let the learning begin!
- With Bluebee Pal, the child will hear the directions to the sign and the tips to remember the sign throughout the learning process. After learning each sign, review them and model the sign with your child or student.
- Can Bluebee Pal learn the signs too? Practice the signs on Bluebee Pal! Can Bluebee Pal also make the sign “drink” and “eat”? Try it out! With Bluebee Pal involved in the learning process, this will increase motivation and engagement for the child or student.
by Becca Eisenberg | Jun 25, 2017 | Becca's App Reviews |
Summer is here and with the warm weather, what do you crave? Ice cream, ice pops and smoothies of course! Miumiu, the app’s little panda loves making ice cream, smoothies, and ice pops. The free app, Ice Cream, and Smoothies Panda Shop allow a child to manage their own shop and make their customers happy by customizing each order. The player will be able to choose your favorite shapes, fruits, and flavors with more than 10 choices. The animals in the app were engaging, fun and exciting for children. The interface is child-friendly and easy to use.
The app will also help a child learn specific flavors and different fruits which can help build vocabulary and learn the various foods within the category of fruit. Other categories include shapes, appliances and other food groups such as dairy (e.g. milk). It will also help with sequencing, following directions, prediction, categorization, and learning simple actions (cut, scoop, blend, eat, etc.). Make your creations even more special with sparkles, special rainbow juice or a cat decoration.
- Connect your Bluebee Pal with your device and let the summer recipes begin!
- Bluebee will help the child make their creations by providing the directions to the recipe (e.g. add the milk, put the fruit in the food processor, etc). Let Bluebee Pal be the teacher in this activity! Help the child recall specific steps in the recipe by asking questions and telling the child what they are doing (e.g. you are blending the smoothie, you are adding the sparkles).
- Bluebee will also provide sound effects which make the app even more fun and interactive! Sounds such as the ice pop freezing, the blender mixing all of the ingredients, pouring the ingredients and more!
by Becca Eisenberg | Jun 25, 2017 | Becca's App Reviews, Cause and Effect Apps |
Petting Zoo app is an interactive picture book with illustrations by Christoph Niemann. This app created by the company Fox and Sheep is fun, versatile and interactive for children of all ages and abilities. Swipe and tap the 21 animals and see their reactions. Stretch the dog, move the lion’s mane up and down, move the alligator’s mouth and much more! The app begins with a bunny and then slowly turns into different animals for some interactive fun! The animations, transitions, and drawings are mesmerizing and children will find it fascinating and clever how to stretch the animals and use their movements of their finger on the screen to give Elephant a bath, move the animal up and down and engage in endless fun!
The app also includes playful and musical sounds for each animal. The app also does not require any specific language or reading so it’s excellent for those students who speak a different language or are emerging readers. Petting Zoo allows you to go to specific chapters in the interactive picture book, turn the music on and off and choose to turn the transitions on or off.
1. Get Bluebee Pal involved in the fun by connecting him via Bluetooth. Once connected, Bluebee can sing along with the music.
2. With each swipe or move with the finger on the screen, the child will hear a different sound which can help build cause-effect skills! This app is excellent for a beginner communicator that is building their cause and effect skills.
3. With the stimulating movements and drawings, this app is ideal for facilitating comments and expanding language. Move your finger in a circle to see the giraffes head move in a funny way. Use this opportunity to ask the child, “What happened to the giraffe?”, “Can you make the giraffe sit?” “How did you do that?”. An excellent and educational app for following directives, commenting, expanding vocabulary and learning actions.
by Becca Eisenberg | May 22, 2017 | Becca's App Reviews, Speech and Language Apps |
Wh Questions – Bingo App is an educational app that can help a child learn to differentiate and respond to various “wh” question such as Who, What, Where, When and Why. Answering these types of questions can be challenging for children and adults with varying disabilities. This app contains who bingo, what bingo, where bingo, when bingo, why bingo and match up bingo. Each game contains over 20 questions. The app includes concrete line drawings of various common items, people, animals and a variety of concepts.
Get Bluebee Pal to be a partner in your Bingo Game. With Bluebee asking the “wh” questions, your child or student will be motivated to answer those questions given those visual prompts from the Bingo board.
- Connect your Bluebee Pal with your device. Choose the bingo board of your choice! With Bluebee Pal connected, your child and/or student will be able to hear the question asked by Bluebee. Miss the question? Activate the speaker icon to hear the question again. With the field of 16 choices as a default, your child or student can activate the correct answer and play the bingo board.
- In the settings mode, you will have the ability to use the minimum of four items and can have up to 36 items on your Bingo board depending on the visual and motor abilities of the player. You can also choose to have the label on or off, have audio hints and have the text only with no pictures to build literacy skills.
- With this app, you get a choice of four different bingo board and a variety of different picture and questions. This app can be an excellent activity with individual students or in a small group of children. It can help build auditory and visual skills by answering the questions and finding the appropriate answer within a field of pictures or text.
by Becca Eisenberg | May 22, 2017 | Becca's App Reviews |
A Day in the Market (Araw sa Palengke) is about a little girl’s very first trip to the market with her mother. The market is an exciting cultural adventure as she meets lively vendors, see a variety of foods and items and finds a special item that she wants! To find out what this special thing is, you can download this app for free and read the storybook. For an additional $2.99, you get access to the book in two other languages, a sorting game and interactive scenes that bring the book to life.
Help your child learn about different cultures through storytelling with this book and Bluebee Pal as your storyteller! Do you want to expose your child to other languages? With the in-app purchase, your child can listen to the book in Filipino and Japanese. This app was also kid tested according to the company. The story and illustrations were tested with more than a hundred schoolchildren who gave their feedback and thoughts about the story and art.
- To access this story, connect your Bluebee Pal with your device. Open to the first page and activate the button, “Story”. Once the story begins, your child will be able to listen to the story with Bluebee as their storyteller! With Bluebee reading the book, the experience can be more engaging and multidimensional. It can also help improve joint attention.
- I like this app because you have to hear the whole page read to you before moving on to the next page. Many students can just stroll through the book quickly without listening to the whole page. This can make the experience of reading this book less distracting and more engaging.
- With the in-app purchase, you can select scene selection that takes the reader through various interactive scenes that the child listens to the story but also gets to activate various people and items in the scenes. For example, when on the second scene in the scene selection, you can activate the noise of the pig by tapping the pig. Get the girl to shake her baton by tapping on it, etc.
by Becca Eisenberg | Apr 23, 2017 | Becca's App Reviews, Speech and Language Apps |
Learning actions is essential for communication and conversation. With this free Actions Words app by Innovative Mobile Apps, your child can improve their receptive vocabulary by learning action words with clear photographs that are included in the app. Action Words is user-friendly and includes over 100 action words for children of all ages and abilities. This app can also be customized to add new concepts in one click (such as adding your own pictures and target actions). Action Words also has the ability to turn action words on or off and introduces each action word one at a time in a field of four.
This app is ideal for younger children as well as children with special needs that need to learn more actions words for both verbal and written communication. The voice on the app can either be recorded by a specific person and personalized or you can use the voice already included in the app. In the settings, you can turn the sound off or on, label the action if desired, turn the transitions on or off, select concepts to play, customize pictures and customize concepts. With over 500 photographs included in the app, you have a variety of opportunities to learn different action words.
Actions Words App connected to Bluebee Pals
- Connect your Bluebee Pal via Bluetooth. With Bluebee Pal giving the prompt for the action, this will help a child gaze at Bluebee Pal first and then choose from the selected picture in a field of four. This can help children you tend to activate pictures quickly without listening to the direction first.
- Begin playing! As you hear the prompt from Bluebee Pal, activate the appropriate picture. If the wrong picture is chosen, a sound will activate to give the prompt to “try again” but the game will continue to be played.
- Get Bluebee Pal involved with the actions! Take some pictures of Bluebee Pal engaged in different actions such as drinking, eating, hugging, jumping, etc. After taking the pictures, use these pictures in the app to teach your child specific concepts. This process of taking pictures of Bluebee Pal hugging, eating, drinking, etc will help carry over some of the skills learned in the app.
