This app allows kids to pick a food (from 3 choices) and drag it up to feed the animal. The animal either acts happy and eats the food he likes or he refuses to eat the food and makes a fun and silly rejection.
On the most basic level it is easily used to work on sentence building: "The cow eats the grass." (In most cases, it is best to have the student say the sentence before feeding the animal).
In addition, it is a rewarding way to work on commenting "He likes it," or "He doesn't like it, gross." I'm always trying to empower my students to use language based rejections such as: "I don't like it," over negative or physical behaviors. But, it is hard to find motivating ways to work on learning the phrase in a setting that is contextually appropriate AND that allows for the student to be in a calm, ready-to-learn state. This app allows for that opportunity!
I also like to use FeedingAnimalFun! to work on past tense verbs (e.g. "The bunny ate the bug") or even asking questions (e.g. "Can I feed the rock to the horse?" "What does the squirrel eat?")
Although the app is clearly aimed at younger children, I have used the app with moderately/severely impacted adults with autism and it has been a great way to work on creating new subject + verb+ object sentence combinations rather than the usual "carrier phrases."
Since many of my students have difficulty accessing vocabulary and using it in novel ways, I made visual supports (this one can be found on boardmakershare.com) to help my students so that they might be more independent with communication. Even for my most verbal of students, the visual support allows for more complex sentences without verbal or gestural prompting.
Oh... did I mention it's free!?! (in app purchases available).
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