Apraxia Therapy Materials: Doodle Buddy iPhone / iPad App

Doodle Buddy is another iPhone / iPad app that can be a wonderful way to elicit speech or sound effects from your child. The program is free, but is overrun with really obtrusive ads. You can choose to pay $0.99 to remove the ads from the application.

This program does many things all of which can be used as a therapy activity.

• It is a drawing program. (Please don't laugh at my lack of artistic skills.) You can draw things for your child to label. Alternately, you can follow their instructions and draw what they tell you to. If they say "car," you do your best to draw one.
  
  
  
• The program has "stamps". There are tons of little pictures that your child can transfer to the screen just by choosing the one they want and then tapping as many times as they like. Even better, each stamp has a sound effect. So the frog croaks, the crying face cries, the dog barks, and so on. Your child can label the stamp or imitate the sound effect. Even if they are non-verbal and using signs, you can wait until they make the sign for "more" before you let them put more stamps on the page. Here is a sampling of the stamps available. There are many more than would fit on one page.
  
  
  
• There are backgrounds and themed stamps to go along with them. Some come with the program. Some you have to "buy" with points. If you are willing to install a few free programs on your machine you can get more points for free to get additional themes.
  
  So you pull up a background. Backgrounds (themes) include dinosaurs, cars, beach, farmyard, lake, princess, space, underwater, winter, spooky house, doghouse in backyard, desert, and more. You make up a story about the picture adding stamps as you go along. You get your child to repeat words that are part of the story. Here are some examples.
  
  Farm: Mama chicken was at the farm today. (insert chicken, have child say, "chicken"). She had three baby chicks with her. (insert three baby chicks counting, "one, two, three") They were lonely! They wanted to play with some friends. (toss in a couple of sheep and practice saying, "baa") I could continue, but you get the idea.
  
  
  
  
  Here are examples of the lake and princess themes as well.
  
  
  
  
  
  
My kids particularly enjoy the haunted house theme, the cars theme, and the farm theme. I'm sure your kids will have their favorites too. Really, the possibilities for using this program as a therapy tool are only limited by your imagination. (I make up really boring stories when put on the spot, but the kids don't seem to care. I get lots of speech and vocabulary practice in and that is all that really matters.)

You might also be interested in the following articles:

Apraxia Therapy Materials: Talking Carl iPhone / iPad App

Apraxia Therapy Materials: The Big Book of Exclamations

Counterproductive?

We're trying to rebuild our deck and therefore we have a ton of random pieces of cut-off wood lying around. I had a brilliant idea to drill some holes in a piece of wood and let the children play with the block of wood, some wood screws and a couple of screwdrivers.

1. They loved it.
2. Michael gets to play with a screwdriver and screws in a sanctioned way.
3. Hmm... do I really want to give him additional, sanctioned, practice with a screwdriver? (See this and this for reasons that this activity is possibly counterproductive.)

NutriiVeda vs NutriiVeda Achieve Comparison

Our first shipment of NutriiVeda Achieve arrived. As expected the product now comes packaged in a resealable 30-serving foil pouch rather than in two 15-serving canisters. The flavor is now French Vanilla rather than Vanilla. Here is a chart highlighting the main nutritional differences between the old NutriiVeda formula and the new NutriiVeda Achieve formula.

The differences I see as most significant, nutritionally are the reduced sugar, added fiber, and added sodium. Although interesting, the added Omegas are not super significant for me because they come from plant sources rather than fish sources making them less appropriate as a supplement for apraxia. Also the dosage is less than generally recommended as a therapeutic dose.

I tried it myself. I do believe that the new NutriiVeda Achieve formulation results in a creamier "shake" (mixed with skim milk) than the original formula. I also think that the new formulation is a little more subtle than the old one. To be honest, I personally disliked the old one. I'm not in love with the new one, but I dislike it less. I found the old one difficult to mix into milk without ending up with lots of big clumps. The new one has the same problem.

The original NutriiVeda mixed beautifully into yogurt. It almost disappeared in terms of texture. If anything, it seemed to make the yogurt a little bit thinner. The new NutriiVeda Achieve seems to mix into the yogurt and give it a creamier, thicker, fluffier texture a little like a mousse.

When I gave it to the kids (occasionally I feed the mix to both kids - it's just simpler that way) Michael immediately noticed the change. He said, "This is a new yogurt. It tastes different. It tastes salty." Now, yes, the new NutriiVeda Achieve does have sodium while the old one did not, but you're also taking the word of a 3 1/2 year old that it tastes salty. I'm not sure he uses the term accurately. That might just be the only word he knows to describe a change in taste. On the other hand, they added sodium and removed over half the sugar content. It may actually taste saltier to him.

He continued to comment on the change as he consumed the bowl. He ate it, but I'm not sure he liked it. Ava ate hers and did not comment on the difference. We've only had one serving so far. I'll let you know if the difference in taste (or texture?) becomes a problem.

Bottom Line The new NutriiVeda Achieve is significantly different in taste and texture from the old NutriiVeda formula. I like the concept of increased fiber and reduced sugar, but I also need Ava to eat it. We'll see if she continues to eat the new formula. I'm not super fond of the increase in sodium. My opinion of the added Omega 3 and Omega 6 from plant sources is neutral.