Go read the Disclaimer again. I am not a doctor. This is not medical advice. Seriously.
A little background about the iPad. I'm a long time Apple fan. I loved the early Macs I used in high school. When I (very belatedly) bought my first computer (I kept using other people's computers, and didn't have to buy my own until I was about to retire and was living by myself), I bought an iMac. When it became unreliable, I bought another iMac. After a brief period of borrowing again, I got a Macbook. When it became unreliable, I bought another Macbook. When I decided I wanted something lighter for travel, I tried a couple netbooks, but bought an iPad when they became available. As happens with all iPad owners, I rapidly discovered that I was competing with a lot of family members to use it and bought a second one. Now, the kids have one each to use while they are awake, and when they are not awake (or are otherwise occupied, there's one each for my husband and I. Albeit crumb-laden and sticky. They have proven quite durable.
My son has an autism diagnosis; my daughter has an autism spectrum diagnosis. My husband and I are too old to have spectrum diagnoses and we haven't had the time to go out and get one as adults. But we know how the kids got to be the way they are.
We have bought a few expensive, more-or-less professional apps: ProLoQuo2Go and ArticPix. The first is a full AAC system, but we haven't used it so I can't tell you if it's any good.
We have not used any of the scorekeeping or report creating features of this app. It has two major components: flashcards and a matching game. In both cases, you select by phoneme, and then subselect by beginning/middle/end for location of phoneme in the word. The layout is closer to what a traditional speech therapist might use than it is to a speech therapist working with children with broader developmental issues such as autism and autism spectrum. Once you have selected your universe of cards, the flashcard option displays a card with the word, a stick figure representation of the meaning of the word, and it says the word. Tapping the card repeats the sound. The person using it is supposed to say the word, then proceed to the next card. There are scoring features which I have not used. The matching game is a matching game, using the same cards. T. likes the matching game a lot, and it is slow to let you turn over two more cards, encouraging the player to think, rather than just whack away at the screen. If supervised, T. will repeat the words cheerfully; he's used to flashcard based exercises at the school. There is no control over the number of cards in the memory game.
Disney is producing a series of Puzzle Books. These books tell a simple story over a series of screens using familiar characters. Some screens are jigsaw puzzles, initially shown assembled. Tap on the screen and the puzzle disassembles; you are offered two pieces at a time to insert into the puzzle by dragging the piece to the correct location and then letting go; they do not "grab" the piece. Upon completion of a puzzle, there is usually a small visual and/or audible effect. On some (but not all) non-puzzle pages, there is an item to be tapped on to collect. There are six of these items per book. At the end of the book, you will be offered the items you have found to match to a picture with empty spaces shaped like the items. If you have not found all the items, you will be offered the opportunity to read again to find them. If you have found the items, you can reread the book either with the items replaced or already collected.
I was raised a Jehovah's Witness; we didn't "do" holidays. It's not that I am not familiar with them, but I don't have any idea how parents communicate to children the whole santa story, much less anything else. Toss in a family full of we-aren't-neurotypical, and conveying the cultural content of the holidays to the kiddies becomes a Project.
I had been buying board books and singing songs and trying to find videos that I didn't find creepy (you try watching Charlie Brown Christmas for the very first time as an adult. You'll have some reservations about showing that to your kid, too), which mostly meant being really excited when I found the Blue's Clues or Backyardigans holiday episodes, and being mildly disappointed by the Teletubbies Christmas CD.
Treat Street lets you change the costume of a very simple character (tap the head, tap the body, it cycles through choices). Once the character is costumed, tapping an arrow sends the character out to a street. Dragging the character towards a house shows you a closeup of the door (decorated) and its doorbell. Tapping the doorbells rings it, the door opens, and you are shown what you receive (generally, but not always, a piece of candy). The candy goes into your goody bag, which you can look into at any time. Simple accumulation, just like trick or treating. Weirdly addictive.
Spooky Halloween has several subgames. One is a very simple matching game of costumed characters (witch, cat, frankenstein, ghost) behind shutters. You figure out who is behind which door by looking closely at the gap in the shutters, thus making this a face-up matching game for the alert. Nice sound effects and good music. There's a puzzle (put the skeleton back together), a connect the dots, a tap-on-the-cats-as-they-appear, and a pick all the x-shapes. You can't "lose" -- you get endless tries. Potentially frustrating for a younger child, but the good news is they can always pick the subgame they like best.
Mickey's Spooky Halloween is a Disney Puzzle Book. The puzzles are 9 pieces. You are searching for ghosts. Mickey is preparing to throw a Halloween party and having a series of mildly spooky things happen to him and his guests.
FW Xmas is version of First Words with winter holiday words, primarily for Christmas.
First Words (we have Deluxe, which includes animals, vehicles, colors, shapes and at home), and FW Xmas. Greyed-out scrabble-like tiles spell out a word. A small picture depicts the word. Scattered below are the letters to drag over the greyed-out tiles. There are options controlling whether the letters are all upper, all lower or capitalized; the length of the longest word; whether the tiles must be dragged in order or arbitrarily, etc. When a word is completed, there is a (very simple) spin/expansion of the picture (no other animation). Surprisingly addictive for both our children, and our son picked up at least a few words from playing this game. One assumes it would at least help with sight reading.
Starfall ABCs offers alphabet block like icons of the alphabet. When tapped, a child starts down a path of arrows (you can go backward at any time). The path starts with animations bringing in the upper and lower case of that letter, adding pictures, words and some simple animations. Some letters have small games (sorting, matching, etc.). Weirdly entertaining programmed learning system for the minimally verbal.
The Wheels on the Bus plays the song over a series of screens. There is one phrase of the song per screen, which repeats as long as you are on the screen. There are several voices and you can record your own. Each screen has several animations that change when tapped. Moving from screen to screen is by arrow; you can go forward or backward.
Itsy Bitsy Spider plays the song over a series of screens. The phrase of the song places once, when the spider is first tapped to move to the next screen. You cannot go backward but touching the spider will repeat the cycle. There are a lot more elements to touch in this game and there is a simple accumulation game after going through the screens one full time.
Fish School moves from screen to screen by swiping and goes forward or backward. There is a bubble at the bottom to switch from letters to numbers and vice versa. Each letter screen has the upper and lower case, a picture of something that starts with that letter, and fish arranged to form the letter. The fish rearrange when swiping to the next screen. The numbers are similar, but without the picture, instead having a series of bubbles across the bottom of the screen (one bubble for one, etc.). Shapes are similar. It also has an alphabet song, playing through the letters without the pictures and with upper and lower case displayed next to the changing fish arrangements. There is a play feature that lets you move fish around; another that lets you pick a color and then shows you only fish of that color; another that asks you to pick out the fish different from the rest; a matching game.
Duck Duck Moose has at least two song games.
5 Little Monkeys plays through the monkeys jumping on the bed several times. There are several little animation toys in each screen. Tapping on or near the monkeys advances to the next screen.
Awesome Giant Animal Hide and Seek has three settings (circus, jungle, ocean) in which to find animals. Each setting has multiple pictures.
Handy Manny is not a Disney Puzzle Book, altho it does contain 8 jigsaw puzzle, each of which can be played at 3 levels of difficulty. It also has a Find It game (find the hidden tools), matching (3 levels of difficulty) and a coloring book. The reward for successfully completing something is a snippet of Handy Manny tools video.
We have a lot of puzzle games. My First Puzzles Toys and My First Puzzles are made to look like wooden puzzles. They're cute, and less jigsaw-y than many of the other puzzles embedded in things like the Disney Puzzle Books. DoReMi's Puzzles is similar, but with gradation of puzzle difficulty.
Copyright 2010 by Rebecca Allen.
Created December 30, 2010 Updated January 6, 2011