"Are You Sleeping” is an interactive animated musical story app plus game (similar to charades) for teaching early learned verbs to young children ages 2-8. The listener can hear the story read in either English or Spanish. Children will enjoy seeing the young girl dancing with the cat, seeing the boy pretending to fly as the bird flies through his bedroom, and many other animations as they hear the question sung “What are you doing?” and “I am _________ing”.
The children are first exposed to several verbs by listening to the story sung while activating the animation by touching the text (learning print awareness). Therefore, children without assistance of adults can use the app.
Then, there is a game component that can be moderated by parents, teachers, and/or therapists to teach additional verbs in both English and Spanish. This game provides 50+ verbs (English and Spanish) for each child to randomly choose one (hear and/or see the text of the verb) following a basketball throw. The option to hear the word is given along with the printed word to enhance the learning; i.e., see (read) and hear the word. If the option “Audio On” is chosen, the child making the choice should stand at a distance from other children so they will not hear the word spoken also. The child then acts out the word and the group guesses the action the child is performing.
The moderator (teacher, therapist, parent) will assist by modeling the verb usage; i.e., What do you think Johnny will do? Johnny will jump. What is Johnny doing? Johnny is jumping. Yes, Johnny is jumping. What did Johnny do? Johnny jumped. Etc. The moderator can access all the verbs and conjugation in both English and Spanish on a page on the app – both the text and the audio. Moderators should also stress the pronouns I, he, she, you, they and we.
The game component also has easy access to the Conjugated Verb List with the present progressive, past and future tenses. This makes it easy for the English-speaking moderators who are not familiar with Spanish pronunciation to provide the children with the correct Spanish pronunciation.
The verbs for the game were chosen according to 2 criteria; (1) those verbs that are learned earliest and (2) those that are associated most often with body parts (Maouene, Hidaka, & Smith, 2007). The rationale for this is that much teaching is based on the fact that the more modalities and more participation involved in learning the greater the retention.
Target skills:
Early verbs – Present, past and future
English as a Second Language (ESL)
Early Spanish for English speakers
Print awareness
Responding to “What is _____________ doing?”
Pronouns – I, he, she, they, you, we
Interface user friendly:
Page turn (bird in lower right corner of each page)
Blinking cue to touch printed verb to activate the animation
Easy access to Home page from each page
Easy access to Conjugated Verb List from game page for game moderator/teacher
Easy access to Settings/Information Page (options to choose Spanish or English in the story or in the game and in the game the option to choose audio on or off )
Design and content: SpeechPathologyApps.com
Artwork: Brenda Bennett
Development: James Rouse of Exceptional Speech Products
Voice-over: Myrna Cabello
About Speech Pathology Apps, LLC: Speech Pathology Apps, LLC, showcases apps by Speech Pathology Apps as well as other apps that will assist therapists, teachers, and parents in using all tools available to teach literacy, speech and language.
OTHER APPLICATIONS: We appreciate your consideration of all our applications – Tea Time, Cake Time, Bedtime, Sleep Time, I Can Say, and Baby Bunny Bouncing Ball, Where Has My Dog Gone (prepositions, vocabulary, some reading and print awareness), Fat Cat App (Reading Level 1), and Bats in the Cave (Reading Level 2).
Maouene, J., Hidaka, S., & Smith, L. (2008). Body Parts and Early-Learned Verbs. Cognitive Science, 32, 1200-1216.