Thursday was recognized as World Autism Awareness Day and the whole month of April has been designated as Autism Acceptance Month. To honor all those with autism as well as their caregivers, I have dedicated this post to apps which may be useful to this amazing community. From apps to help parents and caregivers stay organized, for kids to learn emotions or to practice fine motor skills, this list has you covered. I also had to throw in my son's all time favorite app.
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Free App Friday is sponsored by Math Slicer Free
Math Slicer is great for elementary kids as they enhance their basic math skills while enjoying a "gaming" atmosphere. A math problem is displayed in the background and the user is given 2 options to choose from but they must slice (a quick swiping motion) the correct answer before it's too late. A proven winner, Math Slicer has been a Top 100 Education app on multiple platforms, including the iOS App Store. So, forget the boring flash cards and download Math Slicer to your smartphone or tablet today.
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** Please note: Some of these apps have in-app purchases, but they can easily be disabled in the settings of your device. There are also ads and social network links in some of these apps. Only the app's developer can control when an app is free or not. All apps that we post as free are verified to be free at the time of this post. We make no guarantees otherwise.**
Wunderlist: To-Do List & Tasks
Key Wunderlist Features:
• Create all the lists you need and access them from your phone, tablet and computer
• Easily share lists and collaborate with family, friends and colleagues
• Start conversations about your to-dos
• Attach photos, PDFs, presentations and more
• Share the work and delegate to-dos
• Setting a Reminder ensures you never forget important deadlines (or birthday gifts) ever again
• Organize your projects for home, work and everywhere in between with Folders
Birdhouse: Top Autism Notebook
Birdhouse is a super helpful, easy-to-use website and smartphone app designed for parents raising children with Autism, BY parents raising a child with Autism.
Easily keep a running, searchable journal of your child's daily activities like sleep, medications/supplements, moods, therapies, poop, meltdown, food, and text, so you can figure out what's working and what needs to be changed.
Over time, Birdhouse for Autism will become among the most valuable Autism resources in your arsenal, keeping you organized and in control.
Breathe, Think, Do with Sesame
Laugh and learn as you help a Sesame Street monster friend calm down and solve everyday challenges. This bilingual (English and Spanish), research-based app helps your child learn Sesame’s “Breathe, Think, Do” strategy for problem-solving. Tap and touch to help the monster friend take deep breaths, think of plans, and try them out! Your child will enjoy silly animations and playful interactions as she is exposed to important emotional vocabulary, a calm breathing technique, personalized encouragements, and more!
Sparky Shines His Light
Sparky the firefly isn’t like the other bugs in Stump Village. He's not the best at anything--not sports, singing, or even hiding. The only thing that sets him apart is his tail, which glows brightly whenever he's thankful. Because other insects make fun of him, he tries to hide the one gift that makes him special. It's only when he and his friends encounter danger that he comes to appreciate his talent. Children ages 2 and up will learn the importance of gratitude in this attractively illustrated adventure. They’ll have loads of fun searching for surprises and hidden facts throughout the story
AutiPlan - Visual Scheduling
Use detailed visual schedules shows scheduled activities and tasks with pictures, speech and alarm notifications. Created for people who need some extra help with their daily routine. Use this service as part of the full version of AutiPlan. Please let us know when you experience difficulties or have other questions or feedback!
Writing Wizard - Free Demo
Description
Wants your kids to learn to write the Alphabet? Let them play with Writing Wizard - Learn Tracing, education app making your children have fun and practice handwriting with ease.
Writing Wizard - Learn Tracing is an education app for kids that teach every child how to trace letters, numbers and shapes through a fun system designed to maintain motivation. Your kids learn to write the whole alphabet with fun. Children learn writing upper-case and lower-case letters, with handwriting fonts specifically designed to teach children how to write.
This free version of Writing Wizard contains all the features of the full version for a subset of letters, numbers and words, but you can't add your own words.
TalkinPictures
For children or Adults who are non verbal, Autistic or who otherwise struggle to communicate. A fully customisable communication app for anyone who has difficulty communicating non verbally. This app leads to a more structured way of forming a sentence, so each word suggests what the next word would be. In this app every image can changed. You can select the image from your gallery, downloads or photograph an existing image or item. So you can make it match existing symbols the child is used to using and photographs of the actual people or item the child knows. The size of the list is also limited to eight icons to a page to make it nice and easy to see all the options.
Avaz Lite - AAC App for Autism
Avaz Lite is an AAC app that provides a voice for children with Autism. Featured in TED talk and listed on MIT’s Top 35 Innovations, Avaz Lite is the best solution for your child’s communication needs.
Avaz allows children with complex communication needs to choose from an extensive list of core words and research based vocabulary to maximize their ability to communicate. Designed for children with Autism, Avaz helps improve communication through interactive speech therapy sessions. Avaz is also a great tool for kids with Down Syndrome, Angelman Syndrome, Aspergers and other non-verbal conditions.
Digital Timer
Digital Timer is a free (no $, no ads) and highly accurate and reliable stopwatch and countdown timer for Android with a unique design. Time your runs, time the perfect egg, time that turkey in the oven.
• No ads, no spam, no annoyance. Forever.
• Beautiful, simple, authentic digital design.
• Easy to use, large touch targets utilize the whole screen.
• Hands covered in dough? Use the speech recognition to quickly set the countdown timer.
• Examples of speech: "25 minutes", "1 minute 30 seconds", "30 secs", "an hour", "half an hour" etc.
• Stopwatch and Countdown optimized modes.
Okay, this one isn't specific to Autism, but it's my son with ASD's favorite app, so I had to include it in honor of him. He wants to be a weatherman when he grows up and loves tracking and studying all things weather.
WeatherBug
WeatherBug is a fast, beautiful, easy-to-use app that uses the best real-time, neighborhood-level weather data to help you Know Before™.
Get access to the world’s largest network of professional weather and lightning sensors for the most accurate forecasts, the fastest severe weather alerts and more.
Only WeatherBug provides exclusive Spark™ lightning proximity alerts for your current and saved locations. Find out exactly how far away lightning is to you and stay safer!
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Rachel H is the mother of two kids, one on the Autism Spectrum. They are both the light of her world.
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