Fun with Verbs & Sentences

Created by Patti Hamaguchi, M.A., CCC-SLP, a licensed speech-language pathologist, Fun with Verbs & Sentences is the next step up for children who are learning to speak in sentences, understand past and present verb tensing, and formulate basic sentence structures. It's a great supplement to speech therapy or just a fun way to help children develop language! Now for the iPad, iPhone and Mac screens!

This app is developed for language/cognitive ages 2-6 with eye-popping color drawings and 266 delightful animations--a cutting-edge way to show and teach action words!

This app is our “full” version. It provides a fun way to visually show left to right sentence building (early literacy concepts) and sequence the parts of a sentence in the right order. This full version allows up to 75 users and groups and data tracking.

Want to show animations simply to elicit sentences and verb forms? Just select the "Watch & Say" activity--also a great pre/post assessment tool. Select the verbs from 39 choices or random, and choose the target sentence structures.

But this app does more! Play the "Build a Sentence" activity:

1) Choose your subject: There are three character choices in this app: a boy, a girl, and a bear. You can even opt to select "he" and "she" for extra pronoun practice!

2) Then choose your verb: The next step is choosing something for the girl to do. Use the Custom Verb setting or random. (There are always 3 picture choices, such as draw, jump, or eat). Let's choose "draw".

3) Choose your object or prepositional phrase: The last step is choosing something for the child to draw. (Choices for draw include: cat, spider, or cat).

4) The narrator now voices each part of the sentence slowly, as the circles flip around, one at a time, to reveal the associated pictures: “The girl…is drawing…a cat.” Unless de-selected, the narrator will then model the sentence at a quicker speaking pace, “The girl is drawing a cat.” The child is complimented for the sentence and then instructed, “After the video, it will be YOUR turn to say the sentence.”

5) The animation that shows the sentence that was created (i.e., “The girl is drawing a cat”) is now shown, typically with a sound effect. If the verb is present tense, (which is the default) it snaps back and loops continually, without sound.

6) The child is asked, “What is happening? Tell me the whole sentence.” The circles below can be tapped to show the associated pictures or tapped again to hear the associated audio. The child taps “Record” and tries to formulate the target sentence, then touches “Stop”.

The child listens to the target phrase by touching a “Check” button that pops up, and compares to his own recording. If used in therapy, the data tracking features on the left can be used. (This can be de-selected within the settings if no desired)

*If past tense verb forms have been selected, the animation is shown only once and the narrator asks, “What happened?” If the user would like to target the verb only, this can be selected in the settings, with the question being asked, “What is the girl doing?” (or “What did the girl do?” for past tense)

7) A reward game can be played at desired intervals, the “Pop It!” Game. The child touches bubbles on a screen until a selected “prize” is found.

PRIVACY POLICY: We do NOT collect personal data from our users and have no ads. Personal data regarding user performance on the tasks on this app are self-contained and not transmitted in any way, unless the user chooses to email them to someone else.

A perfect speech therapy app!

Developed by licensed speech-language pathologist Patti Hamaguchi, M.A., CCC-SLP. Patti is an author of books including "Childhood Speech, Language & Listening Problems: What Every Parent Should Know" and co-author/author of multiple standardized tests including the RESCA-E, RESCA-ELD, TAPS4, and ELCI. Visit our website: www.hamaguchiapps.com

Questions or need Tech Support? Email us at [email protected]