Scholastic News Classroom Magazine: from a Homeschool Perspective

I subscribed to the first and second grade editions of the Scholastic News Magazine for this school year. I added Science Spin on to the subscription for each. Now, fair warning. I thought I was going to be able to subscribe for the stated price of $4.49 per student + $0.99 cents for Science Spin. I found out that you only get that price if you are ordering for 10 or more students. When you want to order a single copy, you must call the 1-800 number and they charge significantly more. I don't recall what the price was since I ordered 4 or 5 months ago, but I'm going to guess it was something like $15 or so per subscription.

It was completely worth it. If you subscribe to Scholastic News and Science spin, you get 5 magazines per month (one Scholastic News per week and 1 Science Spin per month). The "magazines" are only 4 pages long. You have the cover, a two page spread in the middle, and an activity/review on the back. The topics are usually science or social studies oriented. They are supposed to increase in complexity and language level over the course of the school year. My kids LOVE them. That's not even the best part though.

As part of the subscription you get access to Scholastic News online. There you can find teacher's guides, printable worksheets, and online versions of each magazine. The online version of the magazine can be read at the regular reading level, or switched to a lower reading level. There is at least one video and sometimes more that is associated with each magazine and the final page of the magazine (the activity page) is interactive and can be completed online. There is also an online "game" for every magazine which is really a learning activity/review.

The online site for each grade level also has access to the digital versions of the past two year's worth of magazines and all the videos and printables. You can easily do a magazine a day online. I find that the children adore sitting down at the computer for our Scholastic News magazine time.

Eventually, you will need to log in to access the Scholastic News online content, but the site is completely open through the end of September. Check it out. Use it between now and then. If you like it, you can call and subscribe for the rest of the school year. We've even used a couple of the digital versions of the Grade 3 magazines while they're accessible for free.

I like that the magazines are a fun way to hit language arts while browsing through a wide variety of science and social studies topics. The activities on the final pages and the online games are an entertaining way to introduce young children to a wide variety of skills such as graphing, main ideas and supporting details, opposites, and more. And all that was just in the first month.

Enjoy!

Dr. John's Candies - A Review

I've been trying to reduce the presence of sugar in my life. Which is great for health, but otherwise rather sad. I intensely dislike the taste and aftertaste of artificial sweeteners which eliminates the option of replacing sodas and candies with diet products or products aimed at diabetics. One of the things I mourned most was the loss of my tea because I just can't drink it unsweetened and I dislike it with the usual suspects of artificial sweeteners.

Then I discovered the sugar alcohols xylitol and erythritol. These are natural, low or zero calorie sugar alternatives that are low-glycemic and do not contribute to cavities. Xylitol actually fights cavities. And they taste pretty great with no aftertaste. Now I find I like the flavor of xylitol and erythritol mixed together at about a 1:1 ratio. Some people experience... gastric distress if they consume too much xylitol and so some people I've converted to xylitol and erythritol choose to consume erythritol straight over xylitol. Xylitol's is slightly better for the teeth. They also have slightly different tastes. Experiment and choose for yourself. I have been unable to find them locally and so I've been buying them on Amazon for over a year now. I use them just for sweetening tea and I haven't tried using them as substitutions for baking, so I have no comments on how they work in that capacity, but I don't use sugar at all in tea any more.

I recently discovered Dr. John's Candies. These are xylitol candies. Xylitol has 75% fewer calories than sugar. It also inhibits the growth of cavity causing bacteria in the mouth. It does not raise blood glucose levels. And they taste great. The children are just as delighted to have a Dr. John's lollipop as they are to have a regular one. I adore their hard candies. They taste great. Seriously. I've tried the butterscotch, strawberry cheesecake, mango, natural cafe caramel, and natural double dutch fudge hard candies and I really like them all. Ok. I've also tried a yet to be released cream soda flavor which is my absolute favorite because they happened to include it in the sampler I ordered. When I couldn't find one that looked like it on the website I called their customer service to ask about it and discovered it isn't available yet on their website. I'll be making another order as soon as it appears. My son enjoyed a chocolate caramel from the sampler and claimed to like it even more than the lollipops. I wasn't as impressed with the caramel that I tried, but I'm not a huge fan of caramels in general.

I just wanted to let you guys know that there is a candy out there that you can feel good about giving to your kids that tastes really great, doesn't contain sugar or artificial sweeteners, and is actually good for the teeth. You can also enjoy them guilt free yourself. I find that a couple of Dr. John's hard candies will help curb a sugar craving.

The company also has some chocolates that I would love to try given how good their hard candies are, but the price is just a little too high. You can't get them in a sample size, and at nearly $20 per box, I just can't justify trying something I might not like. If anyone out there has tried their chocolates and wants to let me know what they thought, please leave a comment!

All About Reading - Level 2: Curriculum Review

All About Reading: Level 2 - A Homeschooling Parent's Review

Background

I am a certified Elementary and Early Childhood teacher and a certified Speech-Language Pathologist. I am homeschooling my kindergartener and preschooler. My son was always precocious where reading is concerned. He's reading independently at this point and I credit our experiences with All About Reading for much of that.

Even as a toddler, he was always interested in his letters. When we read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom to him as a toddler he was very interested in identifying all the letters at the beginning and end of the book. We fed that interest. He just loved to tune into letters and their sounds. So, a little over a year ago, when I began to think about homeschooling I decided to dip my toe into the water, so to speak, with a reading program. Michael loved letters. I loved reading. It seemed like a great place to start.

After researching many programs and trying the free sample materials for All About Reading Level 1, I decided that I wanted to go with the All About Reading curriculum. I wanted a phonics based program. Research supports a solid understanding of phonics as being essential to reading. I also knew I wanted a program that specifically addressed fluency. The fluency sheets in this program are well designed to practice single words, phrases, and sentences. The readers are exquisite and address phonics skills at the story level and reading comprehension at the same time. The flash cards teach sight words to mastery. The teacher's manual ties together all of these elements in an easy to teach way. I liked the design of the program. I liked it a lot. Also, they have a 100% satisfaction guarantee for a whole year. You have a full year to try the materials. If you are unhappy for any reason, just return the materials for a full refund.

When I received them, the materials were amazing. The program is comprehensive and full-featured. The active online forums were helpful more than once. The customer service was prompt and went above and beyond to be helpful (they sent me out a free replacement CD-ROM that I had lost). After completing Level 1 with Michael I purchased Level 2 for Michael and the Pre-Reading Level for Ava. That is how happy I am with the reading programs by the All About Learning Press.

Program Overview - All About Reading: Level 2

The program is multi-faceted. You get two lovely hardback readers. The black & white line drawing illustrations are beautiful and Michael found the stories to be genuinely entertaining. The words used in each story are matched to highlight the new phonics concepts recently taught and review phonics already mastered. You have a box of index cards that lets you review sight words and phonograms (the sounds that are associated with each letter or letter combination). There are magnetic letter tiles that help you build words and practice blending and breaking words apart. The teacher's manual is well written and easy to follow along with. You are walked through exactly what to do and when. Lessons move along at a pace that introduce new concepts while still reviewing the old ones so that concepts are consistently practiced until mastered. The lessons are accompanied by fluency pages for essential practice and fun games and activities that my children absolutely adore. They even include a progress chart to keep track of lesson progress with stickers and a certificate of achievement for the end of the level.

For the most part, the lessons follow an A B pattern. In the first lesson you teach a new phonics concept, play a game or activity to reinforce using that concept to decode words, and read fluency sheets that feature words that use the new phonics concept. Then you practice flash cards with words that use the concept. Those cards are then intermixed with the other flash cards that are not yet mastered for review at the beginning of the next lesson. In the second lesson of each pair, you begin with a pre-reading worksheet that previews key words and phrases that will be in the story. The lesson plan walks you through some brief pre-reading conversation designed to activate prior knowledge and then the child reads the story from the reader to you. There is some kind of post-reading discussion or activity to be done after the reading of the story. I often begin the second lesson in each pair by having Michael choose one story from the reader that he has already read to re-read before we move on to the new material.

Organizing the Materials and Using the Program

Michael and I are 10 lessons away from finishing All About Reading: Level 2. We have loved going through the program and are anxiously awaiting the release of Level 3. When I received the program materials there was a lot of preparation. I spent at least a couple of hours - maybe more - getting all the materials organized. All of the flashcards are printed on full sheets and have to be torn apart along the perforated lines and then placed behind the appropriate index card dividers in the index box. I took all of the activities and fluency pages out of the student book (again along perforated lines) and 3-hole punched them and put them in a binder. I did the same with the lesson plans. That way I have everything I need in one binder. I keep all of the materials together in a single bin on a nearby bookshelf. When it is time for Michael's reading we simply have to grab the bin and go. (Here's a peek in our bin.)

Once the initial preparation is done, very little planning time is needed after that. At the end of each lesson I let Michael have a few minutes of free time (no more than 5 minutes usually) while I preview the next lesson. I highlight the sections of the lesson plan I need to focus on. I cut out the parts of the activity for the next day. I make a few notes about how the day's lesson went and what I want to remember for next time. That way, everything is absolutely ready to go for the next day.

Time Commitment

Once the initial setup is done, planning does not require more than 5-10 minutes (at most) per lesson. If you're happy to cut a few things out during a lesson rather than before, preparation time is even less. The program is designed to be done with a teacher. It is not the type of curriculum where you can set a child up and then let them work independently while you do something else. You need 30-60 minutes at least 3-5 days a week to devote to this.

Download Free Samples

You can download generously sized free samples of key program components like the teacher's manual, student activity book, and the first and second hardback readers. It isn't quite try before you buy, because the included lessons are not consecutive, but it is enough to get a good feel for how the program works. The teacher's manual includes the table of contents, introduction, and lessons 1, 4, 5, 27, 38. The student activity book samples include some sample games and activities and some sample fluency pages. The sample from the first reader includes 3 entire stories out of the 12 stories in the reader. The sample from the second reader also includes three full stories of the eleven in the reader, including Pumpkin and the Kitten. We just read this one last week. Michael was fascinated by the story and Ava abandoned her independent play to come over and follow along while he read it. When Pumpkin is jealous of the new kitten and verbalizes a plan to get rid of the kitten Michael's voice got very quiet and his sister and I had to strain to hear him. He obviously found the story to be quite powerful. Both children were delighted when Pumpkin learned to give the kitten a chance at the end of the story. The storybook samples are definitely worth checking out!

Which of the products I actually bought.

Absolutely necessary: You definitely need the teacher's manual and one student packet for each student you will be teaching with the program. You'll definitely need the two readers as well.

Very nice to have: I very much enjoy having the reading review box and the index divider cards. You could just as easily buy an inexpensive index card box and make your own divider cards though.

Depends on the child: The letter tiles and magnets for the letter tiles are considered to be a main part of the program. If you have a child who is tactile and learns best with manipulatives you'll want these. I bought them, but rarely use them. Instead I use a small dry erase board and dry erase markers for the sections of the program that are designed for the magnet tiles. I find it quicker and more space efficient and Michael simply doesn't need to move tiles around to get the phonics concepts. In fact, when I do get them out he's distracted and I spend more time keeping him on task.

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. If you click on one of those links and make a purchase a portion of your purchase will go towards offsetting the costs of running this blog. I purchased all of the products I reviewed in this post on my own, long before I started using affiliate links and the opinions expressed are completely my own.

4 Fun Halloween Picture Books

What is it about monsters, ghosts, witches, ghouls, and goblins? My children love stories about them (as long as they're nice, and not scary). We discover them when they're out and about during the Halloween time of year, but we tend to keep them on the shelf and enjoy them year-round. Here are four of our favorites that we've been enjoying for several years now.

These are listed in no particular order of preference. Three are meant to be sung and one is just a great story.

1. The Spooky Wheels on the Bus by J. Elizabeth Mills. This is a Halloween version of The Wheels on the Bus crossed with a counting book (up to 10). It begins, "One spooky bus goes RATTLE and SHAKE, RATTLE and SHAKE, RATTLE and SHAKE. One spooky bus goes RATTLE and SHAKE, All through the town. It continues with 2 white wipers (skeleton arms), 3 black cats, 4 glowing wheels (jack o'lanterns), 5 big spiders, 6 singing mummies, 7 silly monsters, 8 wacky witches, 9 magic brooms, and 10 goofy ghosts before returning to the original lyric. The children enjoy the lyrics and love the pictures. They are not scary at all. They are full of detail. We had read / sung the book at least a dozen times before we notices that each picture gives a hint of what is to come on the next page. You can actually guess who is about to get on the bus next. All in all, it is a fun adaptation that we enjoy every time.

2. Ten Timid Ghosts by Jennifer O'Connell. I sing this book. For the life of me, I cannot think of what the tune I use is so that I can tell you. Hopefully it will just come to you as you read the book. You could also simply read the book. It is enjoyable either way. It is a countdown book. It begins with 10 and counts down to one. It begins, "Ten timid ghosts in a haunted house - A witch moved in and wanted them out." She proceeds to do a series of practical jokes on the ghosts each one scaring off another ghost. The children love searching the illustrations to figure out how the witch is pulling off her trick and if you look you can always find her. At the end, the last little ghost figures out that it was the witch all along and tells his friends and the witch gets her comeuppance in the end. It is fun to sing, the story is cute, and the illustrations are well done and add something fun to the experience of reading the story.

3. The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin by Joe Troiano. This is a great story that celebrates differences. Spookley is the only square pumpkin in the pumpkin patch but that quality about him saves the day during a storm. When the farmer realized how special Spookley was he saved his seeds for the next season. The next season all the pumpkins in the patch were unique and people came from miles around to choose a special pumpkin. My retelling doesn't really do the story justice. The pictures complement the story beautifully and the story is told in a rhyme that it fun to read. Excellent book.

4. Little Goblins Ten by Pamela Jane. This is an adaptation of the song/nursery rhyme Over in the Meadow (click here to hear a lovely version sung). I've always loved the melody of this song and I've always loved singing the traditional nursery rhyme version. It is just as much fun, if not more to use the same melody while singing this book. This halloween version begins, "Over in the forest, Where the trees hide the sun, Lived a big mommy monster, And her little monster one." The song hits 9 other types of halloween monsters. The illustrations are gorgeous and not at all scary. The children love seeing the various Halloween creatures and their parents. The final page has all of the creatures together setting off to Trick or Treat.


If you liked these children's book suggestions, I have several others ranging from board books through early chapter books. Check them out.

4 Outstanding Picture Book Variations on the Classic Gingerbread Man Tale

I always found the classic fairy tale of the gingerbread man to be a little boring growing up. It felt like just another story with a moral. Then I discovered a captivating version of the classic tale with adorable illustrations and the story written in verse. The tale became a fun one to tell and I even turned the "catch me if you can" verse repeated throughout the story into a little song. The children and I loved it and we read it weekly for several months and continue to read it at least once every couple of months two years later. I began looking for other well done variations on the tale. Not all of them were great, but I highly recommend these four. We have been reading and re-reading these four in our household for several years. The children liked them as toddlers and still love them as preschoolers.

These are listed in no particular order of preference. They are all short, simple, and sweet.

1. The Gingerbread Man by Jim Aylesworth. It's all in the telling. This is the classic story of the gingerbread man, but the rhyme and rhythm make it a pleasure to read and so much more engaging for the little ones. You'll want a great telling of the classic story for several reasons. First, you need something to compare the others to if you're doing a unit on how fairy tales are often retold in different variations. Also, the Gingerbread Girl stories I'll be talking about shortly set themselves up as direct sequels to the Gingerbread Man story often referring to what happened to the original Gingerbread Boy.

2. The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School by Laura Murray. This variation of the gingerbread man takes place in a school. He is baked by a class of children who leave for recess while they wait for him to cool. He thinks he's been abandoned and searches the school to find his class only to discover at the end that they've been searching for him as well. The illustrations are done in a comic panel format which usually irritates me, but it isn't overdone in this book. In fact there is a lot of detail and humor to be found in the illustrations and it really does add layers to the story to take the time to fully examine the illustrations. Some of the common core standards involve using illustrations to add information so this is an added bonus in the book. Like all the other gingerbread man tales I'm featuring, this one is written in rhyme and is a pleasure to read. My kids love this one too.

3. The Gingerbread Girl by Lisa Campbell Ernst. This book is so much fun. One year later, the little old man and little old woman decide to try again but this time they bake a gingerbread girl. As she bakes she overhears the old man and woman discussing what happened to her brother and she decided that she will not meet the same fate. Later in the story she ends up face to face with that fox and I still clearly remember the anticipation the children felt when they didn't know if the fox would get her. It is fun to read and sing (if you like, just make up a tune) and is a delightful twist on the gingerbread man tale. (One small caveot. The fox uses the words "airhead" and "dumber" in reference to the gingerbread girl. You could either read as is and take the opportunity to discuss why using those words is unkind, or you can simply substitute something less offensive like "silly" while reading.)

4. The Gingerbread Girl Goes Animal Crackers is a sequel to The Gingerbread Girl by Lisa Campbell Ernst. This sequel is at least as awesome as the original, possibly better although you wouldn't enjoy it as much if you hadn't read the first one. This time the gingerbread girl has been with the little old man and little old woman for a year and they give her a present - a box of animal crackers. She loves it because she's always wanted friends like her, but then the noisy mob of animal crackers runs away. The overall story structure is familiar, but the individual pages are so well done. Each page features a different animal cracker rhyme. "My legs move so fast, I'm practically flyin'. You can't catch me, I'm the wild cracker lion!" You can pause before the last word and treat it like a riddle and ask the children if they know which animal cracker the verse is about. There's an excellent balance of tension in the scene with the fox and a great resolution at the end. Outstanding book.


If you liked these children's book suggestions, I have several others ranging from board books through early chapter books. Check them out. As soon as I get a chance, I'll share 4 fun books for halloween.

Curriculum Review: All About Reading - Pre Reading

All About Reading: Pre-Reading - A Review

So you know where I'm coming from, let me give you a little bit of background about myself. I have an undergraduate degree in psychology, a master's degree in Elementary and Early Childhood Education, a second master's degree in Speech-Language Pathology, and was just shy of getting a doctorate in Communication Disorders with a focus on Reading when life took a detour into motherhood a little earlier than I had planned. Priorities shifted, and lots happened in between, but now I'm homeschooling my preschooler and kindergartner. Because I have such a strong background in education I really enjoyed searching for just the right reading curriculum for my little ones and when I found All About Reading I fell in love. I've been using their curriculum materials for over a year now and I have personally purchased and used the Pre-Reading program, Level 1 program and the Level 2 program with my children.

Program Overview - All About Reading: Pre-Reading Program

The program takes your child through the alphabet twice. First you do uppercase letter activities and then lowercase letter activities. You are working on letter recognition, letter sound correspondances, pre-reading skills (such as finding specific letters on a page, parsing print on a page into words, reading from left to right, etc.), and critical phonological awareness skills such as rhyme, syllable awareness, and isolating initial, final, and vowel sounds in words. All of these skills are critical pre-reading skills. I really wish the All About Learning Press would publish a stand alone phonological awareness program for children who are fine with the visual aspects of pre-reading, but seem to really struggle with the phonological awareness part of things. Speech-pathologists that work with young children would LOVE it. But I digress.

Each lesson teaches one letter. You show the letter, read one to three short stories or poems featuring that letter, do a simple craft-based activity page with that letter, and do a phonological awareness activity. The lessons are pretty short. If your child isn't craft oriented or you choose to omit the craft the lesson may only take 5-10 minutes. If your child really lingers over the craft it may take as much as 20 minutes. If you supplement the program (more on that later), you might spend 30 minutes on the lesson.

Organizing the Materials and Using the Program

I'm using the program with my four year old daughter. With my son I skipped the Pre-Reading Level and started with Level 1, but Ava has a history of a speech disorder called apraxia. Children with apraxia often have co-existing problems with phonological awareness and struggle with reading as they progress through school so I particularly wanted Ava to have a good grounding in phonological awareness skills. I specifically chose to start her with the pre-reading level because of the phonological awareness component. Also, Michael was starting homeschooling in earnest and Ava was feeling left out. She wasn't ready for Level One, but she was tired of watching her brother get to do reading every day without being able to do reading herself. And so we invested in the AAR: Pre-Reading Program.

We keep all of our materials for a specific lesson (Ava's reading, Michael's reading, Math, Handwriting, etc.) in a bin on a shelf in our schoolroom. Here's Ava's reading bin.

Inside I have a binder (where I put the teacher's manual pages, activity pages, and keep the progress chart), the two hardback books that come with the program, and the card box with dividers and phonological awareness cards). You'll also find our ziggy puppet in there.

The teacher's manual is well written. It tells you exactly what to do in each lesson and educates you, where necessary, about how to do things or why you need to do things in a certain way. Ava began the program very excited about the simple activity pages, but eventually we abandoned them because she lost interest. They are a simple coloring sheet for each uppercase and lowercase letter of the alphabet combined with a fun craft you can do with things you find around the house. (Crumple tinfoil to make stars and glue on, glue on construction paper to make water, etc.) The phonological awareness activities strongly lean on a character you introduce named Ziggy the Zebra. I underestimated Ziggy. I chose not to purchase the optional $18 hand puppet and then found myself making a sock puppet version of Ziggy because Ava LOVED Ziggy and using the hand puppet adds so much to the phonological awareness activity. He isn't used in every single lesson and Ava often begins the lesson by asking me if it will be a "Ziggy Day".

Almost all of the preparation is when you first receive the materials in the mail. It takes time to review the materials, separate all the perforated cards, and if you wish - transfer the teacher's manual and activity pages to a three-ring binder. After that, the program requires very little day to day preparation. If your child is doing the craft, you need to gather a few simple materials. Otherwise once you're into the program, you can pretty much sit down with your bin and go.

A Typical Lesson

1. Grab bin.
2. Introduce letter of the day.
3. Read selection(s) from hardback book.
4. Do phonological awareness activity.
5. Do craft (optional).

Download Free Samples

You can download free samples of the key program components (scroll down a bit). I recommend it. It gives you a good look at the teacher's manual, activity book, and the two hardback books that are integral to the program. (I love the hardback books in the AAR programs. I particularly like the poetry in Lizard Lou.)

Which of the products I actually bought.

I bought the basic package and added on the activity box and animal stickers. Essentially I skipped the reading tote bag and the ziggy puppet. In retrospect, since I ended up making my own ziggy sock puppet I think some kind of zebra is a nice addition to the program. Buy their puppet, make one from a sock, find an inexpensive stuffed zebra, or just print a picture of a zebra, but I do recommend some kind of zebra visual aid for the phonological processing activities. Want to see our Ziggy sock puppet? Promise not to laugh? Squint your eyes and use your imagination and maybe, just maybe, this looks like a zebra...

Great Supplemental Materials for the Pre-Reading Program

I found that Ava wanted to do a little more so I found some materials to supplement the AAR: Pre-Reading Program.

Usborne Farmyard Tales - Alphabet Book: This book is a perfect complement to the program. It has a sentence on each page with the targeted letter in red so it stands out. There are many items included in each picture that begin with the targeted letter. There is a little duck hiding in each picture and Ava loved to search for the duck. We would read the page in this book for the letter that matched the letter in the AAR lesson of the day. Unfortunately the book seems to be out of print, but there are many used copies available here.

ABC Sing-Along Flip Chart & CD: This product is amazing. There is a song for each letter of the alphabet - one per page. Each page has a full color illustration. The songs are sung to familiar tunes. The songs are really, really well done. Ava and Michael can sing every one from memory (up to V - that's as far as we've gotten). We often sing these in the car or while I'm fixing Ava's hair to pass time. We use dry erase marker to circle all the targeted letters in the poem as we sing the song on the first day. (You could also listen to them on the CD - the production value on the songs is really nice.) We actually sing through all the songs we know, looking at the page and reviewing the highlighted letters at the beginning of each lesson. The songs are short, so it only takes 5 minutes or so to do the entire set and Ava loves it!

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. If you click on one of those links and make a purchase a portion of your purchase will go towards offsetting the costs of running this blog. I purchased all of the products I reviewed in this post on my own, long before I started using affiliate links and the opinions expressed are completely my own.

Review: VAST iPhone / iPad Therapy Apps by Speak in Motion

Speak in Motion provided me with complementary copies of the VAST Songs 1 - Intro app and the VAST Autism 1 - Core app for review.

The VAST Song 1 - Intro app and the VAST Autism 1 - Core app are very different from the typical speech therapy apps. They do not focus on specific sounds. Their target audience is functioning at a nonverbal or minimally verbal level. These are the apps you're going to want to reach for when you have a student who is not responding to traditional speech therapy methods. Specific populations that come to mind are children with Autism, children with severe Childhood Apraxia of Speech, and children with TBI affecting speech.

VAST Autism 1 - Core iPhone / iPad App

The VAST Autism app is focused on practicing functional spoken scripts at syllable, simple word, multi-syllable word, phrase, and sentence levels. Once you choose the level appropriate for the child you are working with, you choose the specific script you want the child to learn. Then the child begins by simply watching and listening to a close-up video of an adult speaking that script slowly and clearly (yet with fairly natural intonation).

The videos stimulate both auditory and visual pathways in the brain. They also allow for simultaneous production which is known to stimulate speech production. The slightly slower production paired with relatively natural intonation also helps facilitate success. The app includes good choices of stimuli. For example, the syllable level includes: mama, papa, moo moo, boo boo, baa baa, beep beep, peep peep, da da, pop pop, la la, Weeee, and Ooooo. These are nice, simple reduplicated syllables using simple consonants and vowels. The levels progess logically from simple reduplicated syllables, to one-syllable words, multi-syllable words, phrases, and then sentences. As the productions get more complex, the stimuli choices focus on functional scripts. For example, some of the sentence level stimuli are: " I need to use the bathroom.", "I am thirsty.", "I am hungry.", and "I need a break.".

Bottom Line

This is an app that consists entirely of carefully chosen stimulus videos. It is accessibly priced at $4.99. If you work with students who are minimally verbal and are not yet responding to therapy targeting specific phonemes this app might be very useful for you. If you do not have any non-verbal or minimally verbal children on your caseload you would probably find little use for this app.

VAST Songs 1 - Intro iPhone / iPad App

The VAST Songs app is a set of videos that show a close-up of either a male of female singer singing one of 10 songs. These videos are useful during therapy because they provide both auditory and visual stimuli and they also stimulate the pathways in the brain involved in music. Research has shown that the rhythm and melody involved in music can often help stimulate speech production. Alternately, they could be used during carryover practice in more traditional articulation therapy (Yankee Doodle for /k/, for example.)

Bottom Line

This is an app that consists entirely of carefully chosen stimulus videos. It is accessibly priced at $4.99. If you work with students who are minimally verbal and are not yet responding to therapy targeting specific phonemes this app might be very useful for you. It might also provide a creative way of working on specific phoneme carryover with other young clients. If you are not working with severely speech delayed children, you might be better off finding a different app for your needs.

Review: Speech Therapy for Apraxia by NACD - iPad App

Speech Therapy for Apraxia iPad App by NACD and Blue Whale App Development: A Review

I purchased this app in order to evaluate it. It is very reasonably priced in the app store for only $4.99.

Detailed Description

Blue Whale is offering their Speech Therapy for Apraxia iPad app for $4.99 at the app store. I find the app to be rather soothing and visually appealing as did my children. The pictures are sweet and the interface is simple. Let's look at what the app does in more detail.

This app allows you to work with one group of phonemes at a time. /b/, /p/, and /m/ are grouped together. /d/, /n/, and /t/ are grouped together. /g/, /k/, and /h/ are grouped together. /w/ is on its own. /f/ and /v/ are grouped. /s/ and /z/ are grouped. /sh/, /ch/, and /J/ are grouped. Finally,, /l/ and /r/ are grouped. They are grouped roughly by developmental sequence and place of articulation. I particularly like the simple, just thorough enough, and easily understandable explanations on the options screens.

Once you've chosen your phoneme set, you are taken to a screen that lets you choose a difficulty level. There are eight difficulty levels that progress in a very logical manner from level one (still CV syllables, but presented in groups of five with a variety of vowels and pulling from two sets of consonants rather than one).

That's it. Once you've made those two choices (consonant group and initial difficulty level) the practice session begins. The stimuli appear on the page. They are a mix of nonsense syllables and real words.

Very young children will have trouble learning the nonsense CV combinations even though the developers make each two letter combination a unique font/color which is a nice touch. However, if the child cannot say the syllable spontaneously, all they have to do is tap on it to hear a model. The child repeats all the syllables and then swipes their finger to move to a new page of randomly chosen (within the structure of the difficulty level) stimuli. When they reach the end of the stimuli the final page allows the therapist to choose to repeat the same difficulty level or to move on to the next.

The program does not track data at all. There is no mechanism for data tracking and therefore keeping track of separate students is unnecessary. It is purely a simple, elegant method of practicing at the syllable level with severely apraxic children.

My 3 1/2 year old daughter was easily able to "play" this speech game independently. I see it as having a place in a therapy room. It would allow you to have one child happily drilling productions while you work with another child individually before switching. At $4.99 it is a very reasonable program to recommend to parents as well

Pros, Cons, and Bottom Line

If you have any children at all on your caseload who need drill at the CV level, this app is a great deal. It is perfect for introducing a new phoneme to apraxic children. It would be great practice for a phonological process or artic child who is struggling to learn a new consonant in initial position.

This app is extremely comprehensive in what it does: CV syllables in an increasing hierarchy of difficulty. They've included pictures of real words where possible and made the visual cues unique when a real picture did not apply.

Here's my bottom line. If you ever need to drill at the syllable level and you like incorporating iPad work into your speech room grab this app. At the price, it will be worth every penny. If you rarely work at the CV level and prefer to skip straight to simple CV, VC, and CVC real words than you won't find anything useful in this app.

The Gruffalo Book and Film Adaptation: A Review

The Gruffalo - The Book

I believe I've mentioned before that The Gruffalo, by Julia Donaldson is one of our favorite children's books. It is available in both paperback and hardback, but my favorite version is a non-abridged board book. It is durable for multiple readings with small children.

The story is about a mouse taking a walk through the woods who uses his wits to convince three predators (fox, owl, and snake) to let him go or risk the wrath of his friend the "gruffalo". The gruffalo, the mouse believes, is a creature entirely of his own imagination so he is surprised to encounter a real gruffalo later in the book. The gruffalo is also looking to make a snack of the mouse and the mouse uses his wits again to outsmart the gruffalo.

The story is written in rhyme and is a lot of fun to read out loud. The story begins and ends peacefully with a happy mouse walking alone in the woods. It is a great read and I highly recommend it.

The Gruffalo - The Move Adaptation

I seriously cannot think of a better adaptation of children literature. This 30 minute film is extraordinary. The animation is exquisite. The voice actors are perfect. The writers that did the adaptation worked magic. Everything in the original story is there and yet they added so many layers. Through a combination of good writing, animated facial expressions, and outstanding voice acting you can actually see the mouse coming up with his story to the fox including how he comes up with the name "gruffalo" for his imaginary monster. And that is just one tiny example of what this film adaptation does to enrich the book. I put it on for the children and they were entranced for the full show through the end of the credits. My husband wandered in from the kitchen and sat with us through the entire showing because it was just that good.

The only caveat I have is that is might be scary for the youngest or more timid viewers. The predators are a little scary as is the gruffalo. Overall though, the film comes no where close to crossing any lines there, but I felt I should mention it. My kids were scared a little, but in the good way.

Seriously, this was absolutely the best adaptation of a picture book I have ever seen. I honestly think that it might be better than the book and that feels a bit like sacrilege to say out loud. You can pick this short film up for less than $8 on Amazon. It would be a crime to miss out at that price. You can get the board book and the movie for a little less than $15.

The Gruffalo - The Extras

Go to www.gruffalo.com for a nice set of online games. There are also 13 free downloadable printables to go along with the story (mixed in with printables for other stories by the same author). These are great activities to do with a young child at home, as a homeschooling literature activity, as a language activity in a speech room, or with an entire class in a school.

The combination of the book, film adaptation, and free online resources is pretty powerful.

Review: Articulation Scenes by Smarty Ears - iPad App

Articulation Scenes iPad App by Smarty Ears: A Review

An evaluation copy of this app was provided to me for free. I was not otherwise compensated for this review.

Detailed Description

Smarty Ears is offering their Articulation Scenes app for $34.99 at the app store. This app allows you to create profiles for multiple children. When you hit "Play" you choose the name of the student you are working with and then the phoneme (p, m, h, w, n, b, d, y, t, k, g, ng, f, ch, j, l, r, v, s, z, sh, and th). Once you identify the phoneme you wish to target you can choose a scene to work with. The scene is a picture filled with items that feature that phoneme. M, N, B, D, T, K, G, F, CH, V, Z, SH, and TH(voiced and voiceless combined) all have Initial, Medial, and Final scenes available. P has I, M, and two F scenes. H and Y have only an initial scene. NG has M and two F scenes. L has I, M, F, and an L-Blends scene. S has I, M, F, SK, SP, and ST. R has M, F, Pre-Vocalic R, and separate scenes for 6 of the vocalic R sounds.

Once you've chosen a scene, you can choose one of four activities to do with that scene: Find the Hidden Items, Tap and Say It, The Movie Theater, and The Production Room. If your iPad is connected to a wireless printer, there is also a simple homework document associated with each scene that features the target word pictures from that scene.

The Find the Hidden Items game simply lists the target words across the bottom of the page. The child can tap on the word to have it read to them. Then they search for that item on the page and tap on it. Once they find it, that target word disappears from the bottom of the screen and is replaced by another until all the words are found. This activity has no data tracking mechanism. You'll have to track accuracy on your own on a separate piece of paper.

In the Tap and Say It activity tapping on one of the target items brings up a popup that shows a picture of the target word and produces a model. After the child says the word (or you can choose to record it with your iPad) you can choose missed it, almost, or got it for data tracking purposes. Then when you back out, you can go to that child's progress report and see a record of the activity and the percentages of correct/almost/incorrect for that activity. You might find it more useful to think of the "Missed It" category as omission, the "Almost" category as substitution/distortion (whichever applies to that particular student/phoneme, and "Correct" as correct. That data scheme would be more useful.

The Movie Theater activity shows the scene while reading a story that incorporates all the target words. As far as I can tell, this is simply a passive listening activity.

The final activity is The Production Room. In this activity, the child is prompted to make up their own story about the scene and record it, or to read a script of the pre-prepared story about that scene. Then they can listen to the recording of themselves telling a story about the scene. There is no data collection mechanism for this activity.

Pros, Cons, and Bottom Line

This app includes a lot of target phonemes with the pictures incorporated into scenes that provide context and facilitate sentence level productions and generalization and carryover. The scenes are attractive and children will particularly enjoy finding the hidden pictures. If a set of 72 scenes with over 1500 target picture words is worth $34.99 to you, then you've already made a decision.

Many of the target words are fairly complex in syllable structure, so this app might not be best suited for working with children with more severe delays. For example, the stimuli for initial /p/ are: pig, pie, plate, pear, parcel, pot, pen, pin, pearl, pencil, paper, purse, pizza, peace, paint, pole, purple, pink, paint, pants, and pliers. Only 7/21 are simple CV or CVC words. All the others contain vocalic-r, consonant blends, or are two-syllable. Also, within app data tracking is minimal so be prepared to track performance separately. In my opinion, these are the major disadvantages of this program.

Here's my bottom line. If you are working with straightforward artic students who do not need a lot of single-syllable, simple syllable shape stimuli and don't mind keeping your data separately, this app might be worth the price. The scenes are great for keeping interest and for facilitation of carryover and generalization. If you are working with children who need simpler stimuli, you are likely to be frustrated with the composition of the targets included in the scenes and you would probably be better off looking elsewhere for stimuli for therapy.

Review and Giveaway: Learning Fundamentals Phonology Apps

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to review two great articulation apps by Learning Fundamentals and host a giveaway of one of their apps. This week I am going to review two of their Phonology apps and Learning Fundamentals has generously offered to sponsor another giveaway of one of their speech and language apps (up to a $59.99 value) to one of my readers. More on how to enter the giveaway at the end of this review.

Phonology: An iPhone/iPad app from Learning Fundamentals

Phonology: App Tour

The Phonology app is a simple to use, yet full-featured app that puts a large set of words with word, phrase, and sentence level audio prompts at your fingertips. Let's take a look at what the screen looks like when you're actually doing therapy.



Each target word is presented as a simple color picture. You may choose to have the word displayed in text below the picture or you may turn that off. Below the picture are several types of prompts. From left to right: "W" plays a high quality audio prompt of the word, "P" plays a short phrase, "S" plays a simple sentence prompt, "Lp" plays the word with a long pause between the target phoneme and the rest of the word, "Sp" plays the word with a short pause between the target phoneme and the rest of the word, and "Ex" plays the word with the target phoneme exaggerated. These six audio prompts are available for every word included in the program.

Above the picture you see a microphone symbol and a speaker symbol. Click on the microphone and wait a moment for it to turn red. Then have the child say the word (or phrase or sentence). Click on the microphone again to turn off the recording. The speaker icon will turn green and you can play back their production for them. You can redo the recording as many times as you like. This feature is simple, useful, and very motivating for the children.

Once the child has made the production you click on the icons at the very bottom to tally scoring data. You can do this multiple times so if you're having a child do sets of three, for example, you can tally their accuracy all three times before moving on to the next word.

In the options you can choose from two different data collection schemes. The first is spontaneous correct/incorrect and imitated correct/incorrect. The second is correct/distortion/incorrect. You simply touch the symbol to record the type of response the student produced.

The settings menu is simple. There is a great set of instructions. The phonological process tab allows you to go in and choose the specific processes you want to work on in the session. You can even choose specific phonemes. If you're working on initial consonant deletion, yet your child cannot make an initial /k/, you can choose to include all initial phonemes except initial /k/. That is a level of customization most apps do not allow and yet is extremely useful.

You can view the target word lists. The options screen allows you to enter the child's name so that a name will be attached to your results data. You can also choose whether to have the word appear in text below the picture. The options screen allows you to reset the scoring data so that you can switch to another student or to a new set of phonemes. This is also where you choose which scoring scheme you want to use.

The results page is pretty simple. It is a simple record of the number of response types you tallied and the phonemes/phonological processes you were working on. It does not calculate percentages for you. If you were working on multiple phonemes or processes, it does not separate out the data for your different targets. I would love to see a more full featured results screen in a future update. (I believe that Learning Fundamentals is working on adding this functionality to their apps and will be adding this feature to future updates quite soon.)

Phonology: Phonological Processes and Phonemes Included

The app addresses four of the most common phonological processes:

• initial consonant deletion (/k, l, r/)
• final consonant deletion (/p, t, k, ps, ts, ks, m, n, er/)
• cluster reduction (/s, l, and r/ clusters)
• syllable reduction (2-syllable words, 3-syllable words)

The app does a wonderful job of addressing final consonant deletion and cluster reduction. The word lists for those processes are deep and the level of customization is impressive. Initial consonant deletion is only addressed through three initial phonemes and those phonemes (k, l, and r) are ones that would be difficult for children exhibiting initial consonant deletion as a phonological process. It would be challenging to address initial consonant deletion with those three specific phonemes as the only initial phoneme categories included in the set. The word sets for the two and three syllable words are relatively short (7 words each), so syllable reduction is addressed in this app with a relatively limited set of targets. By going into the options and choosing initial /l/ and initial /r/ you could work on gliding too although that is not explicitly listed as one of the phonological processes addressed in the app.

Phonology: General Impressions

I liked this app a lot. I like the simplicity of design. I think their pictures are well chosen and their audio prompts are extremely well done. I love the ability to make an audio recording of the child's production and play it back for them. Keeping scoring data is simple and I like being able to make multiple tallies per word before moving to the next word. I particularly like being able to customize the specific phonemes used to work on the phonological processes so that I am not forced to include phonemes that are too difficult for a particular student.

If the phonological processes you're looking to work on are final consonant deletion, cluster reduction, or gliding (all extremely common) this is an great app for you. If you want to work on initial consonant deletion using /k, r, and l/ or syllable reduction using a small set of words those phonological processes are included in a more limited fashion. If you need any of the other phonological processes they aren't going to be found in this particular app.

Most of the words included in this app are one-syllable words which is great. Many are simple CVC words which means that this app can be very useful for people working with children with more severe speech delays.

One drawback, is that the app is not set up to handle groups. You will pretty much need to work with a student individually or taking turns. Whenever you switch students you'll need to save and then reset your scoring data before starting with then next student. Perhaps in a future update, they'll figure out a way for you to enter multiple students and have the app take turns keeping separate scoring data sets.

One final area that I think could use improvement is their results and scoring. I would like to see the results screen calculate percentages. I would also love to have it sort out the scores for the different phonemes/phonological processes. I also do not find "incorrect" to be a useful scoring category. I'd rather have correct, distortion, substitution, and omission as scoring options. The results screen would give me a percentage correct/incorrect with incorrect being the distortion, substitution, and omission categories all combined. Then, I'd like the percent breakdown of the types of errors within the incorrect category. Perhaps that could also be an improvement in a future update. (I believe Learning Fundamentals is working on pushing out this improvement to at least some of their apps very soon.)

Phonology: Bottom Line

This is a great app for final consonant deletion, cluster reduction, and gliding (in initial position) if you don't need it to be a great tool in groups. It can also be of some use for practicing syllable reduction with a limited number of targets (14 total) and initial consonant deletion (only with initial /l, r, and k/). I continue to feel that the Learning Fundamentals speech apps are some of the best I've seen in terms of their ease of use, breadth of targets, and quality of pictures and audio prompts. The portability of the iPhone/iPad format is an added bonus.

Minimal Pairs: An iPhone/iPad app from Learning Fundamentals

Minimal Pairs: App Tour

The Minimal Pairs app presents two minimal pair pictures at a time and asks the child to touch one of the two pictures. You could use this app as receptive auditory discrimination practice, or ask the children to produce one of the two words and work on production. Minimal pair categories addressed include initial consonant deletion (/k, l, r/), final consonant deletion (/k, n, p, t/) and /s/-cluster reduction (/sk, sl, sm, sn, sp, st, sw/).



The app presents two pictures at a time (ex: bow, bone). When the pictures appear, an audio prompt will instruct, "Show me ______." The child can tap on the picture and hear the word associated with that picture. The therapist can score responses by tapping on icons at the bottom of the screen. You will need to decide ahead of time if you are scoring correct/incorrect auditory discrimination vs. correct/distorted/incorrect productions. You can choose to have small boxes appear below the pictures. If you tap on those boxes, you can get visual feedback about performance on the auditory discrimination task separately from the scoring at the bottom of the page. Unfortunately, the app does not keep track of those checkboxes for reporting purposes, so it is not useful for data collection. In the future, I would love to see this app incorporate a correct/substitution/distortion/omission format for data collection on productions at the bottom of the screen and also track the correct/incorrect checkboxes and report that data in the reporting form for tracking auditory discrimination accuracy.

My children really enjoyed playing with this app. They enjoyed the interactive elements. They liked swiping to see the next set of pictures. They liked tapping on the picture to choose the presented word. They liked recording themselves saying a word and listening to their own productions. The app is simple, yet intrinsically rewarding for a child to play with in the context of speech practice.

Minimal Pairs: Bottom Line

If you like working with minimal pairs and want to use minimal pairs to address initial consonant deletion, final consonant deletion, or /s/ cluster reduction, this is a useful, reasonably priced app that children should enjoy using. Just remember that it currently has very basic scoring and reporting options, no way to track auditory discrimination data separately from production data, and the limitation of working with one student at a time.

Learning Fundamentals app Giveaway!!!

One week from today I will use a random number generator to choose a valid entry from the comments on this post. Learning Fundamentals will provide me with a promo code to redeem the app of that reader's choice at the Apple store. To enter, check out the apps available at the Learning Fundamentals website and choose your favorite. Come back to this post and leave the name of the Learning Fundamentals app you'd like to have and what you like most about that particular app in a comment on this post. That's it. I extend my thanks to Learning Fundamentals for sponsoring this giveaway here at Testy Yet Trying. I'll accept entries through midnight on Sunday, July 1, 2012 and announce the winner on Monday, July 2nd.

Review and Giveaway: Learning Fundamentals Articulation Apps

Learning Fundamentals LocuTour has been making speech and language software since 1994. They recently began to convert some of their software into iPhone / iPad apps and provided me with copies of some of their new apps to evaluate. They generously offered to sponsor a giveaway of one of their apps (up to a $59.99 value) to a reader. More on how to enter the giveaway at the end of this review.

(Yes, this is a really long review, but if you're actually interested in the app I hope you'll find the comprehensiveness of the review useful and besides, there's a giveaway at the end to reward you for your persistence.)

Artic Practice: An iPhone/iPad app from Learning Fundamentals

Artic Practice: App Tour

The Artic Practice app is a simple to use, yet full-featured app that puts a large set of words with word, phrase, and sentence level audio prompts at your fingertips. Let's take a look at what the screen looks like when you're actually doing therapy.



Each target word is presented as part of a scene. You can choose to have the word displayed in text below the picture or you may turn that off. Below the picture are several types of prompts. From left to right, you can click on "W" to hear a high quality audio sample prompt of the word. Click on "Snd" to hear the word broken into its individual phonemes. Click on "P" to hear the word in a phrase. Click on "S" to hear the word in a sentence. Click on "SQ" to hear the word in a question. Click on "SA" to hear the word in an answer to the question. These six audio prompts are available for every word included in the program.

Above the picture you see a microphone symbol and a speaker symbol. Click on the microphone and wait a moment for it to turn red. Then have the child say the word (or phrase, sentence, or question). Click on the microphone again to turn off the recording. The speaker icon will turn green and you can play back their production for them. You can redo the recording as many times as you like. This feature is simple, useful, and very motivating for the children.

Once the child has made the production you click on the icons at the very bottom to tally scoring data. You can do this multiple times so if you're having a child do sets of three, for example, you can tally their accuracy all three times before moving on to the next word.

In the options you can choose from two different data collection schemes. The first is spontaneous correct/incorrect and imitated correct/incorrect. The second is correct/distortion/incorrect. You simply touch the symbol to record the type of response the student produced.



The settings menu is simple. There is a great set of instructions. The phoneme tab allows you to go in and choose the specific phonemes you want to work on in the session. You can view the word lists. The options screen allows you to enter the child's name so that a name will be attaches to your results data. You can also choose whether to have the word appear in text below the picture. The options screens allows you to reset the scoring data so that you can switch to another student or to a new set of phonemes. This is also where you choose which scoring scheme you want to use.

The results page is pretty simple. It is a simple record of the number of response types you tallied and the phonemes you were working on. It does not calculate percentages for you. If you were working on multiple phonemes, it does not separate out the data for your different targets. I would love to see a more full featured results screen in a future update.

Artic Practice: Phonemes Included

The app includes the following target sounds in initial, medial, and final position unless otherwise indicated: /p, b, t, d, k, g, f, v, th-, th+ (I,M), s, z, sh, zh(M), ch, J, l, r, m, n, ng(M, F), hw (I, M), H (I), y (I, M), l clusters, r clusters, z clusters, s clusters, and vocalic r/. You can choose to target any of the phonemes individually or in combination. This is an extremely comprehensive set of phonemes and a huge word list. Each word in each category is provided with audio samples for word level, phoneme level, phrase level, two sentences, and a question.

Artic Practice: General Impressions

I liked this app a lot. The pictures are well done and I like the fact that the picture is presented in a scene. It allows flexibility to use the word in a phrase or sentence. It also allows you to use this app creatively for language practice as well. I love the functionality of being able to make a recording of the child's production for playback and how quickly and seamlessly that works. Ava and Michael also enjoyed working with the app. As I first opened it and began exploring it, Ava wandered over and crawled into my lap to "play". She was more than happy to do the speech practice as long as she got to make a recording each time and listen to herself and I let her be the one to swipe her finger across the screen to move to the next picture.

I do have the same concerns about this set of stimuli that I do with other card sets and artic apps though. If you have a severely delayed child, this app will not work for you. Although it does target initial /p/, for example, the target words are often multisyllabic or include blends. If you work with children who need practice at the CV, VC, CVC level, this will not be the app for you. If you are working with more typical articulation clients though, this app is a wonderful resource. Perhaps in a future update they will allow you to filter by syllable length and filter out consonant blends and clusters. That would open this app up a lot for use with more severe speech delays.

Another drawback, is that the app is not set up to handle groups. You will pretty much need to work with a student individually or taking turns. Whenever you switch students you'll need to save and then reset your scoring data before starting with then next student. Perhaps in a future update, they'll figure out a way for you to enter multiple students and have the app take turns keeping separate scoring data sets.

One final area that I think could use improvement is their results and scoring. I would like to see the results screen calculate percentages. I would also love to have it sort out the scores for the different phonemes. For example, I might mix initial /p/ words(easy) with initial /s/ words(hard), and initial /f/ words(also hard) for Ava in order to improve generalization. I would be expecting her to get 100% of the initial /p/ words, and would really only be interested in the percentages for the other two phonemes - separately. This app only gives the tallies for all three phonemes grouped together which is not actually a useful number for me at all. I'd need to keep data using pen and paper. I also do not find "incorrect" to be a useful scoring category. I'd rather have correct, distortion, substitution, and omission as scoring options. The results screen would give me a percentage correct/incorrect with incorrect being the distortion, substitution, and omission categories all combined. Then, I'd like the percent breakdown of the types of errors within the incorrect category. Perhaps that could also be an improvement in a future update.

Artic Practice: Bottom Line

I think this app would be an amazing value if you are not working with severely speech delayed students, you're not too picky about scoring, and you don't need it to be a great tool in groups. The breadth of the target phonemes included, the audio prompts, the beautiful pictures, and the recording and playback make this a great value for anyone doing a lot articulation therapy with students with mild-moderate articulation errors. The portability of the iPhone/iPad format is an added bonus.

Articulation IV: An iPhone/iPad app from Learning Fundamentals

Articulation IV: Abbreviated App Tour

The Articulation IV app is very similar in format to the Artic Practice app so I'll just focus on the differences. Let's take a look at what the screen looks like when you're actually doing therapy.



The Articulation IV app is more advanced than the Artic Practice app and consequently has slightly different prompting levels. It has the word in isolation, broken into individual phonemes and in a phrase. It also has the word in a simple sentence, longer sentence, and complex sentence. See the above set of screenshots for one example.

Articulation IV: Phonemes Included

The app includes the following target sounds in initial, medial, and final position unless otherwise indicated: /l, l-clusters, pre-vocalic l, post-vocalic l, r (I, M), r-clusters (I, M), s, s-clusters, vocalic r (sorted by vowel), th+ (I, M), th-, th- clusters (I, F), z, and z-clusters (F)/. You can choose to target any of the phonemes individually or in combination. This is an extremely comprehensive set of more advanced phonemes and a huge word list. Each word in each category is provided with audio samples for word level, phoneme level, phrase level, and multiple sentences.

Articulation IV: Bottom Line

If you work with students who make errors with the phonemes targeted in this app, this is a great resource and perfectly set up to work very well on carryover and generalization skills. Just remember that it has the same basic scoring and results features as the Artic Practice app and the limitation of working with one student at a time.

Learning Fundamentals app Giveaway!!!

One week from today I will use a random number generator to choose a valid entry from the comments on this post. Learning Fundamentals will provide me with a promo code to redeem the app of that reader's choice at the Apple store. To enter, check out the apps available at the Learning Fundamentals website and choose your favorite. Come back to this post and leave the name of the Learning Fundamentals app you'd like to have and the setting in which you will be using it (at home with your own child, in private practice, in the schools, etc.) in a comment. That's it. I extend my thanks to Learning Fundamentals for sponsoring my very first giveaway here at Testy Yet Trying. I'll accept entries through midnight on Tuesday, June 19, 2012 and announce the winner on Thursday, June 21st.

Next week I'll be reviewing two of Learning Fundamentals Phonology apps and hosting a second giveaway.

Catwings by Ursula K. Le Guin: A Series Review

The children and I have just finished an enchanting series of chapter books. The books are lovely and I will not be able to do them justice but I had to try.

Books written for children are a mixed bag. Some of them aren't very good, to be honest. Others are entertaining, beautifully illustrated, sweet, fun, or all of those. Almost all of them are written for children though. What I mean by that, is that in addition to the content of the book being directed at children, the prose is modified for children as well. Vocabulary is simplified, sentences are shorter and less complex. Effort is made to make the prose engaging for children. Often the modifications are necessary, appropriate, and well done. Some of my absolute favorite children books use rhythm and rhyme to make the text fun to read and listen to.

These books are different. The prose is exquisite. I feel like I'm reading a classic - or poetry and yet, somehow, the stories are still accessible to even very young children. Here is a short excerpt from the first book to illustrate: "So the children's wings were the least of Mrs. Tabby's worries. She washed those silky wings every day, along with chins and paws and tails, and wondered about them now and then, but she worked too hard finding food and bringing up the family to think much about things she didn't understand. But when the huge dog chased little Harriet and cornered her behind the garbage can, lunging at her with open, white-toothed jaws, and Harriet with one desperate mew flew straight up into the air and over the dog's staring head and lighted on a rooftop - then Mrs. Tabby understood."

Every two or three pages, there are beautiful, delicate, detailed illustrations that bring the story to life and help keep little ones engaged in the story. These books entranced my 3 and 4 year old children - a boy and a girl. They entranced my husband and I. I imagine that a young independent reader (1st-3rd grade) would enjoy them as well. Even a middle or high school reader could become addicted to this series.

The books are fantasies in the sense that they are about four kittens who were born with wings. Other than that fact, though, the books take place in the perfectly ordinary settings of a city and the countryside. While appropriate in content for even very young children, they are not all sweetness and light. The kittens encounter hunger, fatigue, injury, and the danger of discovery by humans. These topics are integrated seamlessly into the stories and are part of what make the stories so engaging for the children.

The first book in the series is Catwings by Ursula K. Le Guin and illustrated by S. D. Schindler. Four winged kittens are born to a perfectly ordinary alley cat under a dumpster in the city. When the kittens are old enough to fly the mother sends them away to find a better place to live in the country. Eventually the kittens find a better home.

The second book in the series is Catwings Return. Two of the catwings decide to return to the city to visit their mother only to find her missing and the old alley being demolished by the humans. They discover a lost black, winged kitten who needs to be rescued.

The third book in the series is Wonderful Alexander and the Catwings. The youngest catwing makes a new friend and although she helps him in the beginning, he is able to help her in the end.

The final book in the series is Jane on Her Own. The youngest kitten goes off on her own in search of adventure. She learns some lessons before finding just the right place to settle.

I cannot recommend this series of books enough. They are a perfect read-aloud introduction to early chapter books for young children. The books are five short chapters each with enough illustrations to keep children used to picture books interested. These books could even be read over the course of a few weeks in 5-10 minutes per therapy session. Use them as a "reward" for good therapy behavior and know that they are perfect for increasing listening comprehension, expanding vocabulary, and exposure to advanced syntax at the same time.

Bottom line: Highly recommended.

RightStart Mathematics-Level A: Review and Printable Progress Chart

I became intrigued slightly obsessed with the concept of homeschooling and decided to try a little bit of homeschooling during the next year and a half of preschool to see if we like it. Since Michael has a bit of an affinity for math that was one of the curriculum areas I looked into.

Months ago a homeschooling mother mentioned RightStart Math on a blog I read. Since I adore good concept based curricula I clicked through her link to check out the program and fell in love. In fact, I'm pretty sure the seed for my current fascination with homeschooling was planted right there. A couple of months ago when I decided to take things to the next level RightStart Math was high up on my list of programs to investigate.

RightStart Math focuses on building a strong conceptual understanding of math concepts rather than memorization of facts and strategies. The program is extremely hands-on and involves heavy use of manipulatives and multisensory learning. The core tool of the program is a special abacus that is grouped into fives and tens for quick visual recognition of quantities. The program is divided into five levels A through E that correspond roughly to taking a child through a grade school math curriculum. They recommend you start Level A at age 5 or sooner.

I decided to get the deluxe starter kit for Level A (pictured above) which includes the Level A teachers manual, student book, and all accessories necessary to teach the complete lessons in the book. I got two abacuses so that both of my children could use an abacus at the same time. Check out a sample of the RightStart Level A teacher's manual. Everything arrived promptly nicely packaged in a large box. So far, I've only unboxed/unwrapped the items I've needed for the lessons we've done so far.

So far we've done the first five lessons (the first four are included in the sample pages you can check out for free and the first four only require items you can find around your home if you'd like to check the program out before purchasing). Each lesson is a two page spread in the manual and the lessons have been easy to follow so far. I read through the lesson ahead of time and gather any materials I will need to teach the lesson and make some notes. Here's the next lesson we're about to do in the teacher's manual and some notes I made about modifying the lesson.

Now, due to an early childhood where I was taught to NEVER make marks in books I still can't bring myself to write in books so I make copies of the lessons and keep them in a single binder with the lessons for other things we're working on. I also keep the progress chart I made for RightStart Level A in the binder along with other random supplies we need for our lessons. After we do each lesson I make notes about how it went and move it to a finished section in the binder. Feel free to download and use the progress chart if you happen to be using RightStart Math Level A with a student (or students).

I've taken to keeping all the supplies for our math lessons on a single tray so that when the time comes for a lesson all I have to do is grab the tray and my lesson binder. So far, the lessons generally take about 10-15 minutes and then I let the children play with the manipulatives on the tray as long as they like. I use that time to make notes, read through the next lesson, and stock the tray with whatever I'll need for the next lesson. The kids love the math lessons and are excited every time I pull out the math tray.

In summary, I'm extremely pleased with RightStart Math. The children adore it and look forward to math time more than anything else we are working on so far. Now, we've only done 5 lessons at this point, so this review is based upon my initial impression of the program and its materials and the initial responses of my children to the first five lessons.