Our 5 Favorite Speech and Language Apps: #4 Peekaboo Barn

Our 5 Favorite Speech and Language Apps: #2 – Peekaboo Barn App | District Speech & Language Therapy | Speech Therapists in Washington DC

Happy Monday everyone and welcome back to our speech pathology articles series!! Today we continue our countdown of great apps that promote speech and language.

Next up: Peekaboo Barn

Peekaboo Barn is on my shortlist of favorite apps when I work with the birth to three years old kiddos.

Although it is a very simple app, it immediately engages my clients without fail.

How it works

When you open up the app, the first thing you see is a barn door.  Then the child hears knocking as well as the sound of a farm animal.

When you tap on the farm door, the doors open and a farm animal appears.

It makes a cute animal sound, the doors close, and the knocking starts again, but this time with a different animal behind the door.

That’s it.  Very simple, but incredibly effective and perfect for stimulating a host of pre-linguistic and linguistic skills.

Peekaboo Barn App | District Speech & Language Therapy | Speech Therapists in Washington DC

How you can use it

Intentional communication – I often use Peekaboo Barn as a way to incentivize kiddos to communicate because so many of my kiddos are eager to play with it when I bring it out.  Depending on the child’s stage of development, I may try to encourage they make eye contact with me to show interest, demonstrate intent, or use actual words/phrases (e.g., open, I want more, close door).

The key is to not move on to the next animal until the child gives you the communication you are looking for. Once they do, they get a turn on the iPad (e.g., press a button, swipe on the screen).  This helps reinforce the behavior you are targeting.  Because there are so many animals to see in the app, it naturally provides a lot of repetitions to help develop the skill.

Functional vocabulary development – As mentioned above, you can use this app to target basic vocabulary (e.g., open, close, bye, more) as you open and close the barn doors.  Peekaboo Barn can also foster the skills of labeling animals, making animal noises, and making simple inferences based on the animal noises heard (e.g., open, bye, close, naming animal, animal sounds).

That’s all for now everyone. Check back next week for the last app in our countdown!

If you live in the D.C. area and have concerns about your child’s language or articulation and would like to seek additional help beyond what your school based speech language pathologist may be able to provide, visit out speech therapy solutions page for more information or contact us about our assessment and speech therapy for children of all ages.

District Speech and Language Therapy
1300 I St NW, #400E,
Washington, DC 20005

- https://g.page/districtspeech

District Speech and Language Therapy specializes in speech therapy, physical therapy, and occupational therapy solutions, for both children and adults, in the Washington D.C and the Arlington Virginia areas.