3 More Tips on Using A Smartphone to Get Moving

Screenshot from Play-Move-Develop

Yesterday's blog post was on 10 apps that get you moving.  For today here are 3 more tips to encourage movement when using smart phones or tablet computers. 

1.  You Tube - There are so many exercise videos on You Tube that you can access for free.  Watch learn tai chi (wonderful for seated exercise),  learn new yoga moves or try out some popular Zumba fitness.

2.  Add ebooks to your library - Tired of carrying lots of equipment and papers?  Did you know that you can add the ebooks from Your Therapy Source to your smartphone or tablet?  Just email yourself the pdf document once you download it to your computer.  Open it up on your phone or tablet and save it.  For example you could open up Action Alphabet and follow the physical activities for all the letters of the alphabet.  Open up the Imagination Action Journeys and move through your imaginary journey.   Turn on some music and try some new dance moves with Dancing with the Owls.   Use the picture symbol cards from Mini Sensory Processing Books to allow children to choose the next activity.   Open up Roll Some Fun and use a dice app to roll the die.

3.  Screenshots - Tired of running to the copy machine to provide parents and teachers with ideas?  Tired of paying for color copies?  Use screenshots from the Your Therapy Source ebooks.  For example, open up Roll Some Fun on your iPhone.  Go to the page that you want to use.  Take a screenshot of the page.  Email yourself the screenshot.  Now you can send that page to parents for "therapy homework" or teachers for an in class movement break.  A teacher can even put it up on a projection screen (ie Smartboard) so the entire class can view it.  Want to email activities to parents?  Try Play-Move-Develop (picture above is from Play-Move-Develop).  Again, open it up on your smartphone, take a screenshot of the activity page and email it to a parent.            

Now you have a HUGE collection of sensory motor activities right on your smart phone or tablet.

10 Apps that Get You Moving

Here are 10 apps to get you moving with your iPhone or iPad (in no particular order).  You can click on the links to get more information about the apps.

1.   Dance Party Zoo - dance and iphone measures your rhythm.

2.  Walk N Play - track physical activity with the iPhone

3.  Footsteps - pedometer that can track gait speed and distance

4.  Move Like Me - dance steps to follow

5.  Time Motion App -  use this video app to analyze movement

6.  Using Apps to Evaluate Posture - doesn't exactly get you moving but does get you to sit up straight

7.  FitQuest - Jog, hop and duck with this app

8.  Egg and Spoon - walk with iphone trying to keep egg on spoon

9.  Short Sequence - Kids Yoga - nice images to provide as a visual


10.  Motion Maze - maze powered by your movement.

Check out tomorrow's post on more tips to encourage physical activity using your smart phone or tablet.

Pincer Grasp App - Chalk Walk

There was a new app released this week for the iPad titled Chalk Walk ($3.99).  It states that it helps children develop the pincer grasp.  After testing out this app, it does encourage the use of a pincer grasp in children.  It goes through various levels of visual motor patterns for a child to follow.  You have to bring the blue and yellow circles together using the thumb and index finger in order to move along the path.  The child collects various puzzle pieces to spell a word.

The 6 year old child I observed using it did use a pincer grasp while following the path rather than a typical touch with the index finger.  It was a little hard at times but in general she could do it maintaining the pincer grasp.  If you do not maintain it you can not follow along the path.   She preferred to watch the object go along the path and then trace.  It is a hard to immediately follow the path because if you are right handed your hand blocks the path.  The child enjoyed the video play back feature where you can watch what you just drew.

If the child has longer fingernails or bigger fingers it was hard to maintain the pincer grasp and the older children had to use the index and middle fingers to follow the path.

Overall, a nice alternative for younger children to the typical tracing apps since it does require a pincer grasp.

More information on Chalk Walk.  

Intellipad App for the iPad

I have had the pleasure of playing around with a new app - Intellipad for the iPad. It was created by an occupational therapist, Cheryl Bregman. This app is quite impressive for a simple way to create individualized keyboards. It allows you to make any keyboard you want which is great for simple layouts. It offers word prediction and text to speech as well. Although I am not a speech therapist, I love this app because of its ability to be customized. This would work for an individual who needed very few symbols to select to an individual who could create his/her own boards for communication. Another huge plus if for keyboarding practice. You can eliminate keys to decrease the choices.

Here is one board I created for leisure activities:



Here is one created with a picture alongside of the text:




The updated version of the app allows you to add pictures to the keyboard:



Here is a basic video of the app reading the text aloud.



I can see many opportunities to use the app beyond communication. It would be an excellent tool for teacher's to create interactive lesson plans. Another huge benefit to this app is that it is suitable for all ages. It is available in Spanish, French and German. Fun app to use with ESL students especially with the picture cues. There is also a way to share notepads and keyboards. You can download keyboards already created or share the ones that you create. Overall, super versatile with a lot of bang for the buck.

You can view more videos of the app and further description of its capabilities at Intellipad's website. This app is only $19.95 available from Apple.

Letter School App

Letter School is an app that was just released. I just tested it out because it looked so interesting. I have to admit I am pretty impressed for $2.99 (there is even a free version so you can test it out yourself before buying). Here is what it has to offer:

• different fonts to practice - D'Nealian, HWT and Zaner Bloser
• practice capital letters, lowercase letters and numbers
• reinforces phonics and meaning of letter
• entertaining visual feedback
• two levels

You simply pick the style of handwriting and type of letters or numbers in the settings. When you pick a letter it will show you the letter, verbalize the letter sound and show you a picture of an object that the letter begins with.








Then you proceed to practicing forming the letter. In the first stage you only have to tap the dots not actually form the letter. Once you tap the correct dots the animation will move to complete the letter.












For stage two, you trace the letter from dot to dot. Again, the animation will help you to complete the letter. Check out these train tracks. I know I lot of kids will love these!










In the final stage you form the letter with no dots or letter to guide you.









I have tested out a few letter tracing apps and I give this one the award for the best so far. You can get more information on the website for Letter School or visit the app store.

It is also available on android devices here - Letter School for Android devices.

Fun App to Use for Motor Skill Practice

Here is an app I came across called Spinnerz. This app is only $0.99 and you can customize the spinners with your choices. There are some fun graphics to spin with as well - Holiday themes (i.e. Santa's arm spinning), a fish spinning around and lots of mesmerizing images.

There are many preinstalled spinners that basically work like a magic 8 ball. Ask a question and it will give you a prediction or answer which does not exactly pertain to therapy but...you can make your own lists. Here are some suggestions for make your own lists:
1. warm up activities before handwriting tasks
2. gross motor skills to wake the body up
3. calming activities
4. proprioceptive input activities
5. different colors - spin a color and run to find an item that is that color

Obviously there are many more ideas that you could come up with to suit the children that you work with.

One more bonus - you can actually activate the spinner by blowing on it like a pinwheel too! It is a little difficult but it does work. Go into the settings and turn on the breath control. Now slide the weight all the way to the left and the friction should be low. Just blow right over the center of the spinner and it will start the spinning action. (I could not get the blowing action to work on the iPad only the iPhone)

I really like this app because it allows you to customize it. Plus, I like any app that I can add physical activity to. You can download it for $0.99 at the app store.

If you need simple activity ideas check out our Mini Movement Breaks and Fine Motor Breaks .

Apps for Special Needs

There is a fun new website entitled Apps for Children with Special Needs. The unique thing about this website is the video demonstrations of the apps. For example here is an app about dressing skills. There are videos on how to dress, how to wash your face, how to wash your clothes, etc. You can get a nice preview of the app before purchasing it. Worth a look if you are unsure of what to load your iPad or iPhone with. Check it out at Apps for Children with Special Needs.

iPhone Apps and Occupational Therapists

Here are two iPhone apps that I have tested out for letter formation. Either of these could be used as fun tools to encourage kinesthetic practice of letter formation.


The first I tested was Letter Tracer. This app was $0.99 when I purchased it. I really liked the simplicity of Letter Tracer. The letter is shown in capital or lowercase. There is a voice over to say each letter and number aloud as it appears on the screen. You can change the settings so that you can "write" with different colors and pen size. You can also change the voice from male, female or child. The touch screen picks up the child's finger rather easily which is a plus. Although, there is no guide for where the child to draw the actual strokes of each letter. You can choose between having a stencil of the letter as seen on the right side or no stencil and a blank screen for the child to write the letter.







The second one I tried was ABC Letters Tracing Lite. This app was free for the lite version. I tested the lite version which only goes from the letters A-F. The benefit of this app is that it demonstrates the actual strokes of each letter for the child to follow. Each letter is said aloud with the phonetic sound of each letter. You can choose to view the strokes or to just trace over the letter. There is nice visual and verbal feedback when each stroke is completed. If you choose to follow each stroke, the child must be very precise. This can get frustrating for the child. He/she is doing the correct stroke but the touch screen does not register it exactly resulting in negative feedback (i.e. sorry, try again...). If the child does not follow each stroke and just chooses the tracing option, he/she does not need to be as precise.

Do you use these apps in your practice or can you recommend any others for letter formation?