Our second favorite application is “Barefoot Atlas”. This app features an interactive 3D globe. Your child is able to spin the globe to zoom in on different regions and countries of the world. It includes interesting landmarks, historical events, and sea and land animals. Once your child finds an interesting item, they can click and zoom in, where a narrator will read the item description aloud. This app is usually most appropriate for school-age children, although some preschoolers have also found it interesting. This application is a great way for your child to become the “teacher”, as they can listen to the explanation and then tell you about what they learned. For children working on specific sounds, you can vary the task according to the appropriate practice level (your speech-language pathologist will let know you what to practice). This might include “searching” for items with your child’s sound, making a sentence containing his/her sound, or using three sentences to describe an item while concentrating on his/her sounds. For children working on language skills, the application is rich with information, so it’s great to work on expanding sentence length. For instance, the child may say something like “The whale swims”. They can then make a longer sentence by saying “The whale swims in the Pacific Ocean.” Or, the child may work on language organization by starting with a main idea (e.g., “whale”), then adding some details (e.g., “blue whale”, “biggest whale”, “Pacific Ocean” et cetera). This can then help them tell you about the item or start a short story. Research (see language and math blog) has shown that children learn vocabulary more quickly when they experience the word. The interactive nature of this app helps a child with world knowledge.