Ruby Cube is a company that has developed StorySmart, which are stories developed for children with Autism to help improve social communication. Ruby Cube offers StorySmart includes six individualized stories that have been developed by Jennifer and Pete Minneli.
Each story can be bought individually through the app store. Jennifer and Pete are not only founders of the app but also parents to a daughter with Autism, ADHD and anxiety. Jennifer is a speech language pathologist who works with children with special needs.
What makes Social Smart stories different than other stories? These stories are fill in the blank stories to help with overall social expectations and appropriate behavior. Each page of the story contains visual cues (with animation) to help guide the child to choose the correct response with the individualized verbal feedback that is created by the user before beginning the story. As the child is reading the story, the individual is expected to choose the appropriate written response. It also has the ability to record a “happy/silly” sound and a “sad/annoying” sound to help with feedback in choosing the correct response. For this review, I am going to discuss Casey’s Big Day, which tells the story of the Casey and his first day of fifth grade.
To learn more about Casey’s Big Day and how to elicit speech and language goals, check out my review here
1. Connect your Bluebee Pal. Create your happy and sad sound. Test your sound by pressing “play”. These sounds will help guide the child if they are choosing the correct or incorrect response.
2. When you get to each highlighted word in blue, review the words with the child. Once they choose a word they will hear a “happy” or “sad” sound spoken by Bluebee Pal as well as a visual prompt. This will help the child learn the appropriate response.
3. With the correct responses for each sentence, read the story with the child or choose the “reading symbol” and have Bluebee Pal read the story using synthesized speech (computerized speech). Do you want to record the story in your own voice? Hit record and then have Bluebee Pal read the story back to you with the child’s voice or voice of your own choice!