THIS APP IS GOOD FOR KIDS WHO NEED HELP WITH:

Focus

Getting started and then maintaining attention and effort to tasks.

The beauty of an app that allows for a certain amount of customization is that it can be tailored to the particular needs of a child. It isn’t always easy to get a child to sit down and work on certain skills, but Skill Champ helps parents and educators entice children with themes that play to their interests. While a child is immersed in a train-themed lesson, they’re focusing on building skills and understanding beyond that particular interest. The inclusion of a simple counter at the bottom of each exercise allows children to maintain their efforts on the task at hand without wondering when the lesson will end, which can also help ease transitions from one activity to another.

Self-Control

Managing our actions, feelings and behaviors.

Skill Champ’s benefit to a child’s self-control is multifaceted. Not only can the aforementioned counter that displays the number of problems left in a lesson assist in helping a child with larger issues of self-control—improving impulse control and thinking about the future—but all of Skill Champ’s exercises call upon a certain amount of motor control. Kids must drag and drop images from the left half of the screen into the correct positions on the right, with varying degrees of accuracy required.

Self-Awareness

Another benefit to the themed lesson approach of Skill Champ is that it can help a child recognize the particulars of their own learning process, empowering them to find ways to learn in the future that work for them. For younger children learning about emotions and children on the autism spectrum who have difficulty reading facial cues, specific—if simplistic—practice comes in the form of the “Happy/Sad” exercise. Photos of men, women, and children are displayed, one happy face and one sad face per screen, and children must match the face to the emotion.