Hey friends! Do you use apps in therapy? I find that I do quite a bit during therapy for articulation, just to change things up from the norm and engage my students. I have a new app for you to check out, just in time for Talk Like a Pirate Day on September 19, Articulation Hunt! This app is another creation from Home Speech Home, who are also the authors of one of my favorites, Word Vault Pro – HomeSpeechHome PLLC. 
What I love about this app is that is designed with the school SLP in mind, you can select groups of students to work with…up to six at a time! When setting up profiles, you add the student's name and picture/avatar. I usually opt to just use an avatar to save time, but having the picture option is a perk.
Before starting the game, you choose the target sound, position, and speed of the game. The app comes with /b/ already loaded, but the other phonemes are easily downloaded as you go. This is nice because the app isn't eating up your memory with sounds you don't need/use. You can target 25 sounds, including /s, r, l/ blends and vocalic /r/ (air, ar, ear, er, ire, or). I do wish there was an option to target mixed positions, so I'm hoping to see that in a future update!
In the app's setting you can turn on/off the sound effects and music. The app also uses voice activation, which you can turn on off. Voice activation can be one of those tricky options in apps…depending on how you are using your iPad to deliver therapy and any cases you might have, it doesn't always pick up the sound of a voice easily, so keep that in mind. Also, if you are working on anything above word level, then you won't want to use voice activation because it will pick up the other words the student is saying and interpret them as the target word. I'm glad to see the option to turn it off if I want! 
When you have all of your settings ready to go, it's time to practice! A picture will pop up for the student to say and it designates the number of practice attempts required with stars…the number of stars varies from picture to picture. If you have voice activation turned ON, every time the student says the word, a star will light up. If you have voice activation turned OFF, you control the stars with the correct/incorrect buttons. Once all of the stars are lit up, it's game time…
These bubbles will start appearing on the screen and the student will pop the one that has their target picture. This is where the speed of the game that you chose will come into play. These bubbles can pop up slow, medium, or fast, depending on the level of your students. As they pop the correct ones, they will earn a jewel…but if they pop the wrong one, they will collect a skull and three skulls has them practicing the same level again. There are 9 different lands in the app. Students will earn 3-5 jewels before returning to the practice screen. I really like that there is an incentive for popping the right ones and some sort of “consequence” for popping the wrong…we all have those kids that will just pop everything they see. 
Once you are done with the game, it will prompt you to save the data for that session. In the progress section of the app, you can see that it saves the date, target, position, and score. There is also a section to add any notes you might need for that session. All of the information is able to be emailed.
Overall, I think this is app is a great addition to my iPad and my students will enjoy playing it! I like many of the features included in the app and it works great for my caseload… and the pirate theme is an added bonus!
This app is available in the iTunes Store: Articulation Hunt – HomeSpeechHome PLLC
I also have THREE copies to giveaway to my readers! Yay! Enter via the Rafflecopter below:
a Rafflecopter giveaway
If you are looking for MORE pirate themed activities, make sure you check out these in my TPT store!
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This looks like a really fun app for articulation!
An awesome APP that will work with my CCN ID kiddos. They will love the pirate theme.
I am looking forward to possibly winning this neat app to use with my Elementary School articulation students! If I don’t win it, maybe I can purchase it!?!
Love the looks of this app and I love that it is friendly for school slps so they can group students together. I have so many artic students that would benefit from this. I also love that it can be used for mixed groups and we can talk about prepositions (e.g. The bear is on top of the car. The car is next to the starfish, etc.)
I am always looking for more resources for my sessions!
Ooooooh! I would love, love, love to win this app! As a public school SLP, I would use it with all of my artic kids! It would be especially helpful for kids in my small groups!! I use Apple TV in my classroom to project our apps on the screen so that all can see as we work. They love it! I adore the pirate theme and this would be absolutely awesome to use for Talk Like a Pirate Day!!!
Super curious about how this could work with 5 minute artic. Can you pull off 100 reps in 5 minutes with this app? Would love to try it out to see.
Thanks for the comprehensive review – I am always looking to add apps that can be used with small groups.
I use a variety of apps in therapy and would LOVE to have this one to use. I use my own personal iPad and would find this resource a benefit.
Great review! This app looks like a perfect edition to pirate week! I love reading “How I Became A Pirate” and playing Pop Up Pirate so this would be an awesome technology piece for the students! 🙂
I think this looks great for our small articulation groups! And, I love Talk Like a Pirate Day! 🙂
Looks like it would be great for artic groups who are working on both similar and different sound targets. And I like the ‘game’ after the practice.
This sounds great!
Always love a good artic app to add to the mix!
Always looking for fun new apps to use! Thanks for the great overview.
would love to try this app! The voice activation feature is very neat!
This will be helpful to use the app with my mixed group and make articulation fun.
This app looks like it would be so much fun for my articulation groups! I love how you can have up to six students working at a time. I also appreciate the “consequences” factor. That would definitely motivate my students to stay focused and not pop just anything!
It looks like a great resource! Would love to utilize it in therapy at my technology center.
This app looks so fun! I think it make a very nice addition to my iPad center when I’m working on mixed groups and progress monitoring days.
I can totally use this app during pirate week but other times too for extra motivation. I like how you can get multiple trials in a fun drill way. This would be awesome to win!
I would LOVE to have this app for my students!! Thanks for doing the review!
Reminds me a little of What’s the Pic Artic, which my artic students love! Looks like it would be a great motivator for getting many productions!
I’ve never heard of this app but it looks like fun. Thanks for sharing!
Oh how fun!! I would love to use this for pirate week and also just in general 🙂 looks great! I love that Word Vault Pro app too
This would be wonderful with my little ones! Always looking for new ways to target the same old stuff 😉
I do a lot of quick 10 minute artic sessions, so this would work great for those!
My kiddos are always so motivated by using the iPad, I need to build up my app selections!
Love that you can target different sounds for each student in a group session!
This app looks fantastic! I can’t wait to try it out for a change of pace from some of our other activities!
This would be awesome for a variety of students!
I’m really wanting to try this app! It looks fun.
I would love to try this out with my artic students. Always looking for new things to keep them engaged.
I want to use more apps this year, so this would be a great addition to the ones I already have.
This looks great and would be wonderful for my little ones. I would love to win it!
I need this app!
Thanks for the blog post Jenn! I do wish the best for you and your colleagues, friends, or family with the hurricane clean up and rebuilding. Hopefully it is much less for you than expected! 🙂
THanks for the opportunity to get this app for free with rafflecopter. I visited both sites on FB and am submitting my comment now! 🙂
I can use this app in my speech therapy sessions with my articulation groups, which happens to be 95% of my caseload. I see the opportunity to add some motivation to my dreaded and boring speech articulation drill and practice sessions by adding the motivation thru technology! 🙂
Thanks again Jenn! God bless and thanks for the fun ideas~
Rebecca Burrows, NYS/ SLP
I can always use another articulation activity! More than half of the students on my caseload have articulation goals, so I love having new ways to practice!
This would be a great addition as I dive into the world of 5 minute artic!
I love to use apps to practice after nailing my chosen targets for a kid. Or to fill in the last 3 minutes of therapy. I’d probably do the same with this one.
I would use this app during my speech centers!
This app would be perfect for all of my quick speech students. I am always looking for more creative ways to use the ipad to add learning fun in to my therapy sessions.