We like to build these skills through reading, play, social stories, and apps. It is important to use visuals to support social skill learning. Here are some of our favorite social skills apps for kids with autism and hyperlexia.
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Social Skills Apps for Kids
1. Autism & PDD Stories & Language Activities Social Skills
We love these apps! Not only do they go over different social scenarios, but they focus on building comprehension skills. There are various apps available such as:
- Social Skills with Friends
- Social Skills at School
- Social Skills in the Community
- Social Skills with Family
- Social Skills at Home
Choiceworks is a must have app, in my opinion! You can create visual schedules for your child that are supported by visual and audio features. You can also add timers to the schedule. There is also features to support calm down and self-regulation strategies, as well as timers to make waiting less difficult for kids. Great app! Bundle up and save to get this app and Choiceworks Calendar.
3. Choiceworks Calendar
Love this app as much as the regular Choiceworks app, but focuses more on a calendar mode. You can create an entire month of visual schedules for kids to include appointments, holidays, special events, and more! Bundle up and save to get this app and Choiceworks.
4. Breathe, Think, Do with Sesame
This free app focuses on building self regulation skills through video and interactive tasks. Your child will learn calm down breathing from this app and practice making plans for handling overwhelming situations.
5. Social Stories Creator and Library
This app has a great collection of social stories and even gives you the ability to create your own. Each social story includes images, text, and audio for multi-sensory learning. There is an option to also break down the story into its specific rules to reinforce the main parts of the stories.
6. Autism iHelp - Emotions
This app uses real photos of people and the written word to reinforce different emotions. Pretty basic, but I do like the simplicity of it.
7. Emotions: Flashcards to Learn to Recognize Feelings and Emotions
This emotions app offers a few different ways to play: flashcards, matching, and picking the correct emotion. I also like the odd one out games. The app uses real photos of children and adults. The only thing I wish it had was the emotion written out below the photo to support the spoken words.
8. The Social Express II
J used this app a lot when he was doing occupational therapy and really enjoyed it. It uses videos to help kids learn and practice social rules. It is a subscription based app though, so it is a bit expensive for my liking, but still a great app for working on social skills.
9. Look at Me (android only)
A free app that is available for android devices only. It focuses on building eye contact skills.
10. Time In: Smart timer to visualize the passage of time
This app allows you to create step by step visual scripts for tasks such as brushing teeth, eating lunch, etc. As the name of the app implies, it is also a visual timer. The timer also features calming classical music.
11. Let's Be Social: Social Skills Development
This app has lots of lessons and quizzes to help kids learn social skills. You can also create your own lessons.
12. Model Me Going Places 2
This free app features narrated photo social stories (video modeling) for going to the hairdresser, going to the mall, going to the doctor, going to the playground, going to the grocery store, and going to the restaurant.
13. Social Norms
This app has over 50 illustrated social stories and allows you to create individualized stories. We haven't tried this one out yet, but it looks really great!
14. Look in my Eyes: Train Engineer for iPad
This app is a good one for little train lovers! It focuses on building eye contact skills. Again, we haven't tried this one out ourselves, as J isn't really into trains, but it looks like a fun app.
Other Ideas You'll Love
Free Social Skills Printables for KidsFree Printable Daily Visual Schedule for Kids
Apps for Kids to Work on Pronouns
