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Old MacDonald wishes his farm had this much going on! Apraxia Ville is the newest app from Smarty Ears.  This wonderful, farmed themed app finally provides SLPs with a new resource to target apraxia or severe phoneme production difficulties. The farm theme is cute and engaging without being to ‘busy’, this is a great balance for my little friends.



To get started you input your students name and chose an avatar.  There are lots of fun characters choose from. You can select up to four players at one time.  


Once you have selected your players you can choose from three activities: The Sound Windows, The Farm House  or The Words Farm.  You can select up to four players for each activity.



The Sound Windows allow students to practice sound production. This activity has two barn windows, each with their own phoneme. The window with the boy avatar targets consonants and the window with the girl avatar targets vowels. When you tap the targeted window the avatar produces the sound. You can change the targeted sound by tapping the phoneme and then scrolling through and selecting a different one. A really cool feature is that you can slow down the speed of the production so that your student can see how the sound is produced. To use this feature simply slide the red pepper at the speed you want.  Now, if you have  an iPad 3 you are in for a treat. This activity has a special feature. If you tap the camera in the upper right corner of the barn window it will act as a mirror for your students to watch their sound production. I have an iPad 2 and it worked just fine for me, so if you don’t have an iPad 3 don’t worry 🙂



The next stop on the farm is The Farm House.   This is where students can practice single syllable word productions.  This activity is for up to four players.  To switch players simply tap their picture. With this activity you must set up levels for each player.  Level 1 focuses CV & VC and Level 2 targets CVC.  You can chose from 12 consonant groups and 10 vowels. If you are having a student return to this activity you can ‘tap on a button’ to repeat their previous targets so you do not have to re-enter the information. The Farm House also has the boy and girl avatars from The Sound Windows for some practice if needed. There is a magnifying glass next to them that will enlarge their faces to better see how the sound is produced.  You also have the option to record and play back students productions. I really like this feature. It is always better for students to hear themselves and pin point where something is going wrong rather than me saying “try again”. This is also a great way to encourage and practice self-monitoring.  To track a student’s productions, tap the green, yellow, and red circles.





The last stop in Apraxia Ville is The Words Farm.  This area allows you have up to four students work on articulating sets of words.  You can choose between sets of  two or words. For each word you can change what phoneme you want targeted and at what level CV & VC or CVC.  You can track their productions by using the green, yellow, and red buttons in the upper left corner.  You can also record their productions for lots of self-monitoring practice.



In The Farm House and The Words Farm you can see student progress when you are finished. You may chose to import the information into The Report Center or send it to yourself. 





A feature that I absolutely love is the HOMEWORK feature. That’s right, it comes with homework sheets that you can print out and send home or email directly to parents!  To create a homework page for a student tap the Reports and Homework tab on the home screen. Then you can select the phoneme you want targeted and at what level. You have the ability to customize word pools for students to save and access again later too.  You can also add your own pictures and labels to target words specific to your students. 





Overall, Apraxia Ville is a wonderful new resource to use when working with students who have severe phoneme production difficulties. It offers progressive levels and the ability manipulate and customize phonemes to meet each student’s individual needs. Students can see how sounds should be produced, watch themselves in real time as they target their sounds, and record their own productions for self-monitoring practice. You can track student progress in The Farm House and The Words Farm sections. One of the best features of this app is that if comes with pre-made homework sheets that you can either print out or email directly to parents.  This app is a great addition to any SLPs tool box. 

You can add Apraxia Ville to your speech tool box by visiting the App Store. 

*I was provided with a copy of this app by Smarty Ears in order to complete this review.  I was not compensated in any other way for the review.  Thank you Smarty Ears for giving me this opportunity!

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Meet Maureen

Hey there! I’m Maureen Wilson, a school-base SLP who is data driven and caffeine powered. My passion is supporting other pediatric SLPs by teaching them how to harness the power of literacy and data to help their students achieve their goals…without sacrificing time they don’t have.

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