“Mostly Free” Food Apps for Therapy

I love food. My students love food. What better way to teach following directions than to incorporate recipes. It makes teaching sequencing and vocabulary more functional and real-life as well.
Here are some great apps to work on following directons that my kids ask for over and over. The best part? They are all sold for under a buck or two.  But be prepared: After reading this-you may need a quick trip to the kitchen 🙂

App #1 Cookie Doodle
A must-have for Christmas. Around each holiday, I let my groups working on receptive language skills make a cookie. This app has a nice selection of recipes and then can be decorated for a specific holiday.

I like this app because it seems real-almost as if you’re in the kitchen making cookies. Kids love tilting the iPad to pour in the baking powder, touching it to crack the egg, or even-careful now with my precious iPad!-shaking it to shake the salt. I always work in temporal directions. “First sift the flour, then add the sugar.” or “Before you cut in the butter, pour in some vanilla.” It makes working on these types of goals fun!

App #2 Cake Pop Maker
Love, love, love cake pops! I even bought one of those cake pop makers. I’m corny, I know.
Anyways, this is the same type of concept but this app is completely free! It doesn’t have as many options as Cookie Doodle but, as I always say “Free beats cheap any day!”

And thanks to my friend Stephanie for pointing out that dragging those sticks works on those fine-motor skills for preschoolers-you’re welcome OT!

App #3 Easy-Bake Treats!
This sure takes me back! Did you have an Easy-Bake Oven? Some of my kiddos know what this is but for the rest of them, I get to retell the story of one of my favorite Christmas gifts. 😉

Another great food app that comes free! Hooray!
Have kids make pizza using steps and sequencing.

App #4 Cooking Mama Lite
This app was even “kid-suggested.” It’s pretty popular out there. The full app is $6.99 so I only downloaded Cooking Mama Lite (free). It comes with just one recipe, but…for those hard to motivate kiddos-this does the trick! And…they like talking about it with their friends. I’ve found that when I really want my “not so social kiddos” to fit in, I turn to the “cooler” apps out there. They’re great conversation starters!
I can also work on concepts such as “Quickly cook the onions so they don’t burn!” or “Slowly turn the skillet.” Watch out though-Mama gets angry if the recipe isn’t cooked just right!

App #5 Toca Kitchen
This app is sold for $1.99 (my most expensive cooking app) but I love it. It’s from the same producers as my Toca Tea Party that I use in social group. Kids serve 4 characters by slicing, boiling, frying, cooking, or  microwaving food. This is another great app for social group as they have to “perspective think” What would a cat want for dinner? I make my kidds “pretend” they are working in a restaurant and say “What would you like to eat?” “Can I take your order?” and wait on them.

I hope these gave you some really inexpensive ideas!