Free Speech and Language Apps for Bilingual Kids!

Photo: Monki Shake It on itunes.apple.com

 

The following apps are FREE and fun to use with kids who are multilingual:

1. First Vehicles by Moo Moo Lab   

Photo: Moomoolab.com

Ahoy! By land, by air or by sea, the First Vehicles free version offers six different vehicle options including a fire truck, police car, submarine, ship, dump truck and airplane.  Kids 1 and up can color the vehicles, pick the correct vehicle from a choice of 6 or solve a basic one-two piece puzzle.  Best of all, the vehicles are interactive and fun!  This app would work best for toddlers.

Upgrade: Love First Vehicles?  There are expansion packs.  Buy an additional 15 vehicles for $1.99 and 30 additional vehicles for $2.99.

Languages: English, French, Japanese, Mandarin, Spanish

Get it here.

2. Animal World by Moo Moo Lab

Photo: Moo Moo Lab Facebook Page

Elephants, Zebras and Peacocks, oh my!  Another great game for toddlers, Animal World features

Bilingual Articulation Phonology Assessment (BAPA) Application: The First Standardized Speech Assessment App

Photo: smartyearsapps.com

I’m always looking for fun and creative ways to assess linguistically diverse individuals who may present with speech deficits. When it comes to standardized assessments, it can be tricky. Many individuals present with language difference that standardized assessments are not designed to detect.  As a result, many individuals who are culturally linguistically diverse appear to have deficits when in reality, they just communicate using different language productions.  Articulation assessments such as the Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation are excellent for detecting speech sound disorders among monolingual students; however, I often find that they are difficult to use when assessing Spanish-speaking individuals.

Enter the Bilingual Articulation Phonology Assessment or the BAPA for short. Developed by Smarty Ears Apps, this app is extremely easy to use and efficient for speech therapists who work with individuals who present with articulation and phonological difficulties.  While some may stand by the administration of standardized assessments on paper, over time with the support of empirical evidence, standardized assessment apps may just be the wave of the future for SLPs.

While looking into assessment apps, I immediately became intrigued by a demo provided by the developers.  Now that I finally received the app and am able to review it (see below), I hope that this will help other SLPs looking for new assessment tools for Spanish-speaking individuals.

The BAPA was developed by Barbara Fernandes, Ellen Kester, Mary Bauman, and Scott Prath, and published by Smarty Ears. The BAPA can be used with individuals of all age groups. It is compatible with the iPad running iOS 5.1 or above.

Pros

Dialectal Difference Tool – This app can be customized depending