Our Final Hours as a Company

Today begins our final hours as 2 Gals Speech Products, LLC and as you would imagine, it is a sad day.  We will officially no longer exist as a company at midnight Sunday night.  If you want to order any of our delightful games, software, or FAME workbooks on CD you had better do so quickly as we are in our final hours of operation as a company!

http://www.2galsspeechproducts.com/

May God always BLESS YOU as you give so much of yourselves to improve the lives of others!

Leah and Dean

Adventure Pack- Jungle Adventure

Today we wrap up this series highlighting our Adventure Pack software.  Our focus is on the Jungle Adventure game.

Of course to get started in this game you must set it up with the stimuli that your client needs to practice.  Here is a brief explanation of how to do that:

Once you have the software installed you will see the following, which we call the "teacher interface" or the screen where you select what you want your student/child to practice that day. This is totally customizable for each individual child.

 We get calls frequently from SLPs who are unsure what to do here, so let me take you through it step-by-step. It is as simple as 1-2-3!

1. Practice Level: select either word, phrase or sentence depending on where they are in their individual therapy.  You will click on the word, phrase, or sentence button and it will be highlighted. As you can see here sentence has been selected.

 2. Sound Choice: here is where you will select the sound you are targeting.  The software comes with these speech sounds: F-V-K-G-R-S-L-CH-SH-TH. Not all sounds are visible within the bar so you must click on the arrows on either end of the sound choice bar to scroll through the sounds. The sounds are listed alphabetically. The sound selection will glow green to show you which sound you are targeting.  In this picture the S is selected.

3. Placement in Word: you have the option here to select whether you wish to practice the sound in the initial or final position of the word/stimuli that is to be practiced.  It is very important to tell you that yes you do indeed need to click on  the green "GO" button to complete the setup and tell the computer which stimuli to load.  Although this may read like a lengthy process, in actuality it takes only seconds to set up a game.  We have found the students learn quickly and will often set it up themselves. ;)

That's all it takes to customize and set up the program for use.  Once you click on the GO button you will see this screen where you or the student can select the game to be played.

Now let me tell you about the Jungle Adventure.  This is the most difficult of the four games because it  requires the use of all 4 arrow keys on the keyboard and has several different perils one must work through to get to the end of the game.  Your older students 4th-8th graders will enjoy this one.  As I have said before the difficulty level of these games really is subjective because it all depends on an individual's own level of computer skills.  I'm not a gamer so I find it a challenging game.


The goal of the game is to get through the jungle and arrive at the Safe Hut without losing your life and make as high as score as you can.

As you work your way through the jungle you will encounter perils which will also bring up your speech prompts.  You MUST find the speech prompts and say them or you will not be able to progress in the game.  Your little man will simply stand on the side of the screen walking but getting nowhere!  Once you do your speech prompts the game continues.

Here is a list of the obstacles you will find along the way:

1- Pits- Don't fall in or you will lose one of your four lives;

2- Ledges and walls- you will need to climb up and over them gathering pineapples for extra points;




3- Quick Sand- If you fall in it you will lose a life so grab the monkey's hand and swing over it;
                               


4- Bushes-conceals your speech bubble so use your machete and chop the bush down;

                                                                                                  

5. Snakes- big and small they will bite and you will die.  You can either jump over them or kill them with your machete.

6. Cliffs- If you jump up and over into mid air where the speech bubble is suspended, you will activate a bridge where you can safely cross;

7. Head Hunters- they will kill you with their spears so walk back 2 or 3 steps and when the screen says JUMP do so and you will safely jump over their poisonous spears;

8. Giant Mosquitoes- Stay out of the way until a speech bubble comes your way then jump into the speech bubble.

 One really fabulous feature of this particular game is that it is not a stagnant game in that the obstacles will appear at random each time the game is played so the child can not memorize or "learn" the game sequence.  It is new, different and challenging each time they play!

So have we convinced you that the Adventure Pack software is sooo worth the money?  Do you want to buy it now.  If you do don't forget you need to purchase before 9-30-2012!
http://www.2galsspeechproducts.com/index.php?id=9

Leah and Dean

Adventure Pack- Ski Doodle

We're going to tell you about the SKI DOODLE game which is the 3rd game on our Adventure Pack CD.

As I have mentioned in the previous posts in this series you will need to read the first blog-post to understand how to customize the the game to load your preferences for your student to practice. ( http://2galsspeechproducts.blogspot.com/2012/08/adventure-pack-software-what-its-all.html )  This game is what we call a moderately difficult game to play as it requires the use of all 4 arrow keys on the keypad.  It is really subjective regarding the difficulty level.  Leah thinks this is an easy game to play and I find it difficult :) Let me explain how the game is played.

You will find yourself on a jet ski in this water race game.

The object of the game is to get through the course without "wiping out."

 You have 4 lives that can be lost by running into crabs, sharks, or rocks.  You get points just for staying in the race and not wrecking or losing lives. To add to the excitement in this game you are times and must make it through the course before the time runs out.  The timer is the green bar at the top left of your screen.

You will steer your jet ski with the arrow keys on your keypad like this:

• Right Arrow will steer to the right;
• Left Arrow will steer to the left;
• Up Arrow will increase your speed;
• Down Arrow will decrease your speed.

You must hit the ramp to activate the speech prompt.

Once you go over the ramp your speech bubble will be visible and your jet ski will automatically go into it and your stimulus will be pop up!

Your total points will be doubled each time you run over a flag up to a total of X16!  You can really get some high scores!

Your game will be over when you lose all your lives or your time runs out.  At that point you may enter your initials inn the "HIGH SCORES" box.  If you did not score a high enough score the high scores box will not appear.  The game determines if you scored high enough to get to enter your initials, so you will not make that determination.

What a FUN game this is!  We know $99.99 may seem like a high price to pay for this software, but we hope you are starting to see that you are getting 4 customizable real video games that have been developed by Speech Pathologist just like you! This is unlike anything else that is currently on the market for drill and practice.  Children BEG to "play these games" in therapy and at home!

Next week we will tell you about the last of the four games on this CD!  Enjoy your therapy this week.

Leah and Dean
www.2galsspeechproducts.com

You can order the game here: http://www.2galsspeechproducts.com/index.php?id=9
REMEMBER WE WILL BE GOING OUT OF BUSINESS 9-30-12

Adventure Pack--Mountain Adventure

Part 3 of our series in which we give you in-depth information on our Adventure Pack games will focus on the MOUNTAIN ADVENTURE.  Our previous two posts have explained how to use the teacher interface to customize the games for individual needs,  answered some frequently asked questions about the games and introduced the Swamp Adventure game.  If you have not read those please go back and read them to have the basic information of the games.

The difficulty level of this particular game is based upon the computer gaming skills of the student.  We consider this to be a moderately difficult game because it does require use of all four arrow keys on the key pad.

Here is the opening screen of the Mountain Adventure game.  As I explained in the Swamp Adventure post you can click on PLAY to play the game or BACK to go back to the teacher interface to customize the game for your student.  The High Scores! section was explained there too, so I won't bore you by repeating all that information.  However, since I'm just the nicest person you'll ever meet here are links to those posts in case you have not read those.  http://2galsspeechproducts.blogspot.com/2012/08/adventure-pack-software-what-its-all.html
http://2galsspeechproducts.blogspot.com/2012/08/adventure-pack-swamp-adventure.html

In this game you are a mountain climber and must climb to the top of the mountain to win. You move your climber by using the arrow keys on your keypad. REMEMBER the mouse does not control the characters in the game. You can move the climber UP by pressing the up arrow or DOWN with the down arrow and of course LEFT or RIGHT with the left and right arrows.  You can also move him DIAGONALLY by holding the up arrow simultaneously with the left or right arrows. You can also move downward in a diagonal direction by holding the down arrow simultaneously with the left or right arrows.  The diagonal moves will help you greatly when you are dodging falling rocks and icicles.   In this game there are obstacles and perils: falling rocks, icicles, and mountain goats that will butt you off the mountain.  Each time you are hit by one of them you will lose a life.  Note the colored squares up in the right hand corner of the screen which shows how many lives you have left.  You have four lives in this game.

Do you see the crevice in the mountain (that black jagged image under the mountain ledge)?  You will also notice there is a cloud beside the ledge.  You can climb no higher than that  cloud until you do your speech task. There is no way to move forward in the game until the speech component has been attempted.  Although this is a very fun game to play the purpose of the game is to practice your speech, so the game ensures the kid isn't just playing and not practicing.

You must move your climber over to touch the crevice to bring up the speech bubble and then maneuver over to touch the speech bubble to activate your stimulus picture pop up.  Yes, that is a lot of climbing and dodging obstacles!

 

When you finally reach the speech bubble and touch it a stimulus picture such as this pops up with the audio stimuli (word, phrase, or sentence) for the child to repeat.  In this particular picture it is R initial word "wrist".  After the speech task has been completed (repeated as many times as you require him to say it) remove the picture stimulus by hitting the space bar* to resume the game. (Note that if you are using a headset with a mic, speaking removes the stimuli.)  The cloud will be gone and you will then be able to climb up to the next level on the mountain, touching crevices to bring up speech bubbles and touching speech bubbles to activate the speech stimulus pop up.  There will be falling rocks, icicles, and mountain goats all along your way up the mountain.

The faster you move up the mountain the more points you will end up with that will qualify you to enter your initials in the High Scores ranking on the opening game screen.  You will not need to make that determination as the computer will automatically present you with a blank line and a blinking cursor to enter your initials if you qualify.  NOTE: you will at this point need to use the mouse to click on the line to write your initials.  (Yes, someone called with that question once.)

GAME CHEATS:  If you see small rocks falling, that signals that a large boulder is coming from that direction and you need to move out of the way.  The icicles will make a tinkling sound right before they fall signaling that are getting ready to fall.  You can use your climber's hand set the icicles off  to get them to fall so that you can move. Just be sure to move out of the way quickly.  The mountain goat will only head butt you, so you can move behind him.


So there you have it, the ins and outs of Mountain Adventure or should I say the ups and downs :)
Next week we will tell you about the Ski Doodle Adventure, so stay tuned!

Leah and Dean
www.2galsspeechproducts.com