Category Carousel Review

Category Carousel

by Pocket SLP $9.99

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/category-carousel/id516878389?mt=8

Another great resource to work on building vocabulary and language skills! This app is simple to use and the graphics are cute! There are 9 categories to work with: transportation,  animals, household, summer, clothing, winter, food, occupation, and instruments.

The Game: You select how many categories you want the child to sort through (1-9) and it will bring up a screen with the category names on top and all of the items on the bottom. The students have to drag the items up into the correct category. (Simple touch, hold, and drag). If the student puts an item in the wrong category it will pop back down for them to try again. After all of the items have been sorted you then can choose one of the categories on the top and  subcategorize! This is a really neat feature! This takes the learning experience a step further!! It is a more difficult skill to subcateorize within the categories because the items are more similar and not as contrasting(veggies/fruits/meats ect...).  This is great for when a student masters the main categories and they are ready for a challenge! 



The images are all real-life objects, which I think makes this game meaningful (the students may see an item and already have an attached meaning to it in their life!). 





This app can be used alone or as a supplement to your thematic teaching! I do a seasons/weather theme in the winter and I can use this app to sort through summer/winter items to reinforce what I am teaching them! Use any of the categories to go along with your lesson plans! I also have used this to check progress on IEP goals.  (If a child has a category objective on their IEP I will use this app to see how well they can categorize.  For example: Mandi was able to categorize 6 out 10 pictures correctly when presented with 3 contrasting categories with minimal cueing).


I highly recommend this app for the reasons above! It is affordable and well worth the money! This app was made by speech therapists and you can tell!

Read PocketSLP's Description in iTunes
Whether you are a speech language pathologist or a parent you will find the Category Carousel app a fun way to increase and enhance a child's vocabulary. The ability to categorize and subcategorize words and concepts is a skill necessary to build, store, and retrieve words leading to better comprehension and expressive language skills.

Choose a category (or multiple categories) and let children touch the pictures, hear the word, and then sort them by dragging them into various categories. Once pictures have been dragged into a category users can touch the category and watch it split into sub-categories, encouraging the child to think about words in multiple ways. Audio reinforcement and correction are included in this fun and educational app.