“Draw & Tell” by Duck Duck Moose is a wonderful tool for speech therapy. First you select your background paper from colors, stripes, polka dots, checkers and more. Tap the paint brush to choose your medium–stickers, dots, paint, colored pencil or crayon–and start to create your story. Kids liked to start with the characters along the bottom because they could size them and move them around. They added background scenery and details like hats, mustaches, cupcakes and buttons to their images as their story grew. I’ve used this app several times with kids 7 and up who were working on articulation goals. I used carrier phrases today for /th/ easily as the child said, “This goes here, and that goes there.”

Yesterday, an 8 year-old girl asked for “Draw & Tell” again as she formulated a story around a party. Note the giant ant lifting weights with the cupcake and the bird’s hand drawn legs. The table had to be lengthened to accommodate all the goodies–cherries, tea, hamburger and apple. This little girl was working on final /s/ so she practiced as she said, “This __ goes here.”

There is no limit to what you can do with this app. Younger kids can use it for reinforcing language structures as you build your story. Do a little more drawing to make a road with the yellow line down the middle as the tow truck picks up a disabled vehicle on the side. Birds fly in the sky and alligators hang out in the pond as kids move the figures around and tell you why.

Every speech therapist will love the record feature so kids can listen to themselves whether they are practicing a sound or story telling.