Squiggles – an app review by Helen

I love finding new apps that I can use with the kids I see. Like technology or hate it, there are few things that motivate as well as a really good app! I can’t take the credit for finding this one though – I did a joint session with another SLT recently and she had this one on her iPad. It’s been a huge hit with the kids I see since I downloaded it, as well as with my own daughter!

The concept of Lazoo Squiggles is very simple. It’s a basic drawing app with a twist. There are 13 different pictures – faces, birds, cars, rockets etc. It tells you what to do – eg draw squiggle nests for the birds, or draw squiggles to make the cars go. You can change the colour and style of the lines as you go. When you’ve completed it, you can press the Go button in the top right corner and they move. Eg the cars zoom across the screen, the nests spin and the birds lay eggs which hatch… You can also add stickers to the pictures and move them around. Kids of various ages love it as you can make it as simple or complicated as you like! No drawing skill required, which makes it perfect for me as I’m somewhat artistically challenged!

There’s also a free drawing screen where you can draw any picture or pattern you like and when you press the Go button, it spins round and round.

I found this video about the app online, check it out for more information.

And the best thing of all about this app – it’s free!

So, how can you use this app in therapy? Here are a few ideas:-

• It’s a great motivator for speech sound work (add a new bit to the picture each time you say a word/ sound sequence/ sentence).

• Work on colour – draw orange squiggles…. Draw squiggles on the blue rocket…

• Work on prepositions – eg put a sticker on the rocket, draw squiggles under the clouds etc.

• Use it for making choices – there are quite a few images to choose from.

• Use it for prediction skills – what will happen when I press go? (Some are obvious and some have an added surprise!)

• You can save completed pictures, so you could save one and use it as an expressive language activity the next time – get the child to describe the picture they made.

Can you think of any more ideas?

No-one has asked me to write this review – I’m just sharing something I find useful in therapy!