Magic Moments: AAC Intervention with Apps You Love – Disneyland Explorer

Disney’s free app, Disneyland Explorer, is literally a walk in the park.  We love the quality of the graphics, which are incredibly vivid and reminiscent of the old ViewMaster toy. The app is simple-just some views of Disneyland but because many of our kids have such intense memories of the Florida version of this theme park, it’s a natural for language therapy. Not everyone is lucky enough to live near a Disney park, but even so, there  are lots of fun things to explore on this app.Take a peek at a video of the app here and you’ll see what we mean.There are lots of clinical/educational uses for this app, particularly for those kids we know whose lives are punctuated by trips to the Magic Kingdom. Here are some suggestions for AAC users of various ability levels.

1. Multiple opportunities for using AAC to say prestored sentences like “Make it go” or “Turn the page” or “Do it again.”

2. Great context in which to practice descriptors. “The train went fast; A scary robot; Buzz Lightyear is brave; The river is wet.” Build linguistic diversity. Yes, the Indiana Jones Adventure is ‘good’ but let’s stretch ourselves and say that it is ‘fantastic, awesome, cool, exciting, terrific, neat,” etc.

3. For kids who are actually going to make a trip to the park, this app can be used in conjunction with a social story to help prepare for the adventure. That will go a long way in ensuring that the trip is less stressful for everyone.

4. After the trip, we can use this to relive the experience and tell about it. Personal narratives take awhile to develop and take a lot of teaching. Practicing narratives by telling the story of what the child did during their Disney trip has another benefit: carryover. Think of how thrilled a parent would be to have their child use AAC to tell this story to friends, teachers, and family members.

5. Practicing specific sentence structures. We are huge fans of the ‘repetition with variety’ approach to teaching AAC skills. This app would be great to practice using AAC to say things like: “I want to see…(Mickey, Splash Mountain, fireworks, etc.).

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Hope you have fun creating some Magic Moments in your AAC intervention with this cute app.