Love it and List It: Favorite Techonology

So last month’s Linky was all about Fluency. If you missed that one, click here to read about all of my fav fluency materials .

March’s madness is technology – and basketball, but I’m not a big sports fan so we’ll still with technology here at Sweet Speech.
Click to see the other posts on this linky party


I love my iPad. We were really lucky to be able to buy an older first generation iPad from a friend for $100. (Thanks, Jeff!) I love that I didn’t pay too much for it so that if it breaks I’m not out a lot of money. I’m not so thrilled that I’ve maxed out the operating system and many of the new apps I’d like to have are not available to download. SO, I can confidently tell you there will be a new purchase happening here in a few months.

I’ve read through all the other links and it seems that the iPad is a strong contender for the
ALL TIME Favorite Techonolgy” award.
I’ve not been fortunate enough to have access to the SmartBoard for speech therapy, but I’ve played around with them enough in the classrooms to be more than a little jealous of those of you who do get one in your treatment rooms! I’m also very excited about being back in the “I own an iPhone” club in a few weeks. YAY! I’m really curious about these QR activities I’ve been reading about online. More on that later…  Since it seems I’m a bit behind on the technology in the classroom game, I’m going to take some time to share a brand of apps that have been amazing for me this school year.

Some of my new favorite not-meant-to-be-speech-therapy-apps-but-actually-are-GREAT-speech-therapy-apps are the games from TocaBoca.

The best money I’ve spent this school year has been on these apps! 

My preschoolers love the TocaTrain



My intermediate school students adore the TocaTeaParty and TocaBirthdayParty



I personally enjoyed the challenge presented by the TocaLabs app. 

My gifted artic kiddos would work so hard for just a few minutes with TocaBuilder

and my best friend’s little boy begs for TocaHouse though he’s not so keen on doing house chores in real time. 😉


What’s great about these apps is that they’re open-ended. There’s no objective, no score, no limit to the amount of language you can use to enhance the game play. 

I just had a session this week with the TocaStore app where one of my kiddos with a turn taking skills goal was able to complete the whole game with minimum assistance AND he requested items appropriately, responded to questions in complete sentences and asked for more!! 
SUCCESS!
Most of these games retail in the app store for $2.99.

I use them for reinforcement after the session, eliciting language from preschoolers, cause and effect for my grade schoolers, sequencing, predicting, conversational skills, pragmatics, and so much more. 

Have you tried these out? Which one is your favorite? 

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