Tech Tip Tuesday : Positive Behavior Apps for Home and School for Kids with Special Needs!
How can you help your child with special needs with positive behaviors at home and school?
There are LOTS of easy apps to use with kids at home and at school to help with routines and positive behaviors. Today, we're sharing a few of our favorites for parents and teachers of kids with special needs - iReward and Social Story Creator.
FROM THE IDS TEAM:
1. iReward Chart
iReward Chart is a fantastic app for organizing and creating motivation around routines or chores for kids. Whether at home or in the classroom, kids and adults love the ability to customize the items in the list itself, and the immediate feedback and progress monitoring the app provides. Each child can have his/her own list, and you can choose from the existing list, or create your own tasks. We love using this in our therapy sessions to go through our checklist of activities for the session, and to provide positive feedback every time a child successfully completes a task.
The app is free for one kiddo, but requires a purchase ($3.99) for more than one - we find this to be well worth it!
2. Social Story Creator
Social Story Creator lets you use pre-made social stories (topics range from pay to going on an airplane to potty training) or create your own. Our therapists love using this app with parents after kids go on a trip to recall events using the family's own pictures and having mom or child use the audio record feature to narrate the story themselves. With the free version, therapists and parents can share stories, and with the paid version ($14.99) you can download and print the app's stories, and your own. If there is a new baby, a difficult time of day for a child, or a new event that may be unknown or stressful for a kiddo, this app can help you quickly create a story which will help your child know what to expect and how to react.
FROM THE PROVIDERS:
iReward Chart
Children love to feel responsible, challenged and respected. But most children don't like being told what to do... iRewardChart also allows you to set up abstract goals like "Patience" and "Sharing With Others", so rewards teach the virtues you want your child to learn.
iRewardChart includes a backup and sync service, so that parents and children can share their chart across the devices. Our sync services is FREE to use, and uses Dropbox, which is also free.
"iRewardChart" is a full featured free version with only the following limitations:
- It supports a maximum of one child.
- It supports a maximum of four tasks per week
Social Story Creator
An amazing app for easily creating, sharing and printing educational social stories, visual schedules, and beautiful memories.
Children with special needs often need more direct instruction of social skills. Teaching social skills to any child may be easier and less stressful when visual supports, like social stories are used. The social stories found in this app explain accurate social information and ensures that your child will know what to expect in different situations.
Social stories are an important type of visual support often used with children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder, Down syndrome or other special need. This social stories found in this app use simple text and descriptive pictures to explain the why and how of different social skills.
DETAILS AND LINKS:
iReward Chart: http://irewardchart.com/
Social Story Creator: http://touchautism.com/app/social-stories-creator-library/