Unlike Oliver, Owen has never been hugely motivated by puzzles. Once the train reaches the station then you get a sticker! Once the picture is complete a little train moves a short way across the bottom of the screen. The pieces are dragged and dropped to form a picture. ![]() In contrast, playing with an app like this encourages him to use spontaneous language that is also appropriate to the scene. He will also put together sentences like “Passenger train, coming through!” and “Here comes the Zoo Train!” When Oliver watches television shows on DVD they tend to reinforce his delayed echolalia. He will talk about the colours of the engines, the names of the different animals and the things he sees in the different scenes that his train chugs through. This section of the app has been great for Oliver as well in terms of encouraging his context-appropriate commenting and labelling. This game really encouraged Owen to work on his dragging skills and they have evolved from the very short finger flicks that he started with to a fully-fledged and deliberate “touch, press, drag, drop” move. Once the train is completed, seeing it puff through a cute scene accompanied by fun music is both immediate and very positive reinforcement for my boys. The drag and drop feature in this game is extremely forgiving which was perfect for him as he started to develop this skill. Your animated train then puffs through the scene you select. In this game, you build your zoo train by dragging and dropping an engine and the animals of your choice. Oliver’s awesome feats of spelling prompted me to share some thoughts about why I think Zoo Train is a perfect app for our younger ASD kids. You can read that post here: If you’re not familiar with the app then you can see Gary James’ video review of it here: It’s a universal app so you can play it on the iPhone and iPod Touch as well as the iPad. I’ve mentioned Zoo Train before in a post about Oliver getting a haircut. I also knew exactly where he got the ability to do this – from playing the Zoo Train app on his iPad! I was both astounded and so very proud of him. ![]() Oliver is echolalic and yet here he was using spontaneous, context-appropriate speech. He grabbed his boat and said “B-O-A-T, boat” then when he found his Orca he said “W-H-A-L-E, whale”. He has a lot of ocean animals that he likes to put into a boat. He got in and started playing with his bath toys. I had never heard him spell out a word before so I told him how impressed I was. A couple of days ago I told Oliver it was time for his bath and he ran to the bathroom and started getting undressed. Water can energize Owen so sometimes I change the timing of his, but Oliver usually finds a bath pretty relaxing so before bed works well for him. As part of our bedtime routine I typically give the boys a bath.
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