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SpaceY

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SpaceY is a system of 5 wireless smart speakers. It enables users to identify sounds and precisely localize the source of sound, that is, to determine its position, direction, and distance. The housings are colored in clear, clear colors for easy recognition. It is the only system of devices on the VoiceToys platform that requires a mobile app and cannot work without it. Sounds in the app are represented by icons. Each one is framed by lines in the color of the speaker. There are 105 sound samples available grouped in sound banks. The app itself includes options for marking answers: OK and NOT OK (represented by thumbs up - with a green background and thumbs down - with a red background) which allow users to mark correct or incorrect answers. Speakers react to these actions by generating sound and light effects. If the child cannot localize the sound source, you can guide them to the correct answer using the "Help" button which activates a light signal on the speaker from which the sound was emitted. Moreover, the app tracks user results: the speed of the latest response, the average value of all responses, as well as accuracy (correct and incorrect answers), providing detailed insight into user progress.

The use of speakers is recommended for developing various auditory, language, cognitive, and social skills, including:

  • Auditory pattern recognition: developing the ability of children to identify and understand sound patterns;

  • Sound localization and lateralization: determining the source of sound and understanding its position in space;

  • Recognition of auditory information with background noise: practicing identification and discrimination of individual sounds in the presence of competing sound stimuli

  • Developing attention

  • Imitation

  • Vocalization

  • Development of phonological awareness

  • Concept naming

  • Classification and categorization

  • Articulation

  • Enrichment of morphosyntactic structures

  • Imagination (explaining concepts, their use, word association games, and guessing)

  • Spatial orientation

  • Integration of stimuli with bilateral coordination

  • Cognitive abilities

  • Patience

  • Following sequences

  • Competitive skills

It can be used with children who have visual impairment, because auditory skills are very important for them to compensate for the visual handicap.

TECHNICAL INSTRUCTIONS:

After switching on the speakers, open the app and select SpaceY when its symbol on the screen lights up green. Then press the "Sounds" button (in the lower right corner of the screen) and select the ones you want to use. There are sounds from various categories: animals, vehicles, household appliances, musical instruments, sounds from nature, pets, sounds produced by the body, mouth, emotions, syllables, and vowels.

GAME SUGGESTIONS

Sound Hunt

Goal: developing auditory attention, spatial orientation, communication

Description: Arrange the speakers in space. Activate the desired sound using the app (e.g., dog barking) and ask the child "Do you hear anything?". If they detect the sound, ask them "What do you hear?" and ask them to point to the toy (or picture) corresponding to the sound. Then encourage them to gesture to indicate where the sound is coming from.

Variation 1: Place cards in speaker colors in front of the child. When you activate the sound, the child should perceive and point to where it is coming from, and then pick up the card corresponding to the speaker's color.

Variation 2: Prepare and place cards with concepts in front of the child that are heard from the speakers (shower water, wind, finger snapping...). The child finds and shows the corresponding card with the picture matching the sound.

Variation 3: If the child is verbal, you should motivate them to accompany all of the above actions with speech (from onomatopoeia to complete syntactic statement). When the child names the concept they hear, you can offer them to represent it graphically, connect the existence of the given concept with objects and phenomena in the environment, describe its application...

Guess Where

Goal: Development of attention, as well as auditory and spatial memory

Description: The therapist arranges the speakers around the room so that they surround the child from different directions. In the game, random sequences of sounds are activated from different positions. The player should remember and repeat as many sequences as possible, specifically: only the sequence of sounds they heard, only the sequence of locations from which the sound was heard, or repeat the sequence of sounds and their sources in the correct order.

Diminished or Enlarged

Goal: Proper use of diminutives and augmentatives

Description: After practicing diminutives and augmentatives, we move on to a game in which we include speakers. When we play a sound from the desired direction, the child perceives it, identifies where the sound is coming from, finds the corresponding word and names it in diminished or enlarged form.

Variations: If the child needs visual support, we can offer them cards with pictures that accompany the given concepts.

Who Is and What Does?

Goal: Use of nouns and verbs, semantic enrichment

Description: Prepare cards with concepts from the sound bank (e.g., picture of a dog, horse...) and arrange them in front of the child. Instruct them to find the corresponding card when they hear a specific sound, match it with the speaker, and name the concept on it. Then you ask questions where the child will use verbs: "What does the dog do?" (or "How does the dog sound?") with the idea that the child will answer "Guards the house", "Barks"...

You can also perform the same game in reverse order: when the child shows a picture and names the concept, you play the associated sound (dog barking) and continue with questions in which the child will be in a position to use verbs. In both variants, insist (if the child's capacities allow) that they express themselves in complete sentences. This dynamic is repeated with other concepts (The cat hunts mice, purrs, etc.).

Describe the Sound

Goal: Development of semantic and descriptive skills through the use of associations

Description: The child identifies the sound and the direction it is coming from, and then describes the concept heard from the speaker using 1-3 words, but not naming the concept itself (for example, if you hear a cat, describe it with the words "purrs, has soft fur, walks quietly, hunts mice...").

In team work, we can give children the instruction "when you hear a sound, describe to the person next to you what you heard, in your own words".

The next variation requires children to already be well acquainted with the sounds in the app. When the child hears a sound that other children have not heard, they have the task of answering questions from other players with YES and NO (Is it an instrument? Is it a weather phenomenon? Is it loud/quiet? Do we have it at home? Is it a dangerous animal? And so on).

Draw What You Hear

Goal: Developing attention and fine motor skills

Game Description: The child draws the phenomenon they hear from the speaker (sound bank from nature - rain, lightning, wind, waves, fire).

For further development of attention and fine motor skills, instruct the child to draw the given phenomenon in the color of the speaker.

The game can be time-limited, and you can track the time in the app. Set the task that if they hear it on the blue speaker to draw for 5, and if they hear it on the red one for 10 seconds. When the set time expires, press the green button in the app for correctly completed task, and red if time has run out and the task has not been completed.

The task can be more complex - draw some other object from another sound bank (e.g., an animal) in which case you give the child more time to complete the task.

In team or competitive games, the one who finishes first wins.

Sound Story

Goal: Development of auditory attention, verbal memory, imagination

Description: Play the child several pre-prepared sounds in a specific order (bell, dog, guitar, motor). The child has the task of arranging cards with the given concepts they heard in the same pattern and telling a story based on them.

We Tell a Story Together

Goal: Team narration

Play sounds in your desired order, and a group of children together with the therapist or teacher tells a story. For example: "One day a boy was alone at home, and suddenly...heard..." (DING DONG - you play the sound of a bell). The children need to recognize the sound of the bell and build a story based on that. Each subsequent sound they hear, after they recognize it, should become part of the story. (When the bell rang, the dog barked.)

After all that, you can analyze the story together, draw, dramatize, etc. (depending on children's motivation).

Throw Out the Intruder

Goal: Development of auditory perception and discrimination

Description: Prepare children that you will play a game in which they need to listen carefully and say which sound does not belong. Play them three sounds from different directions via the app. Two sounds of selected animals and one of an instrument. Children are expected to recognize which sound does not belong. If they are successful, you can gradually include more sounds.

Where's the Error?

Goal: Development of auditory attention and concentration

Description: Tell children a story in pictures and from the speakers from different directions play sounds that follow it. When children master the correct sequence of action, the therapist deliberately makes mistakes by playing sounds in a different order. Children are expected to recognize the error and correct it.

Follow Your Color

Goal: Development of gross motor skills

Description: Arrange speakers in space at a certain distance and play sounds of animals. Tape strips in speaker colors on the floor (straight, winding, zigzag...). Listening to sounds coming from the speakers, the child has the task of moving in the way the animal that made the sound moves (jumps, walks on four legs, crawls...) along the tape that is the same color as the speaker.

Catch the Cat

Goal: Developing listening attention

Description: The therapist randomly plays sounds from the speaker. The child listens carefully and when they hear the previously agreed concept (e.g., a cat), they raise their hand/clap their palm against their palm/stomp their foot on the ground/tap their hand on the table, etc. Besides that, the task can be to raise a hand when they hear: a small, domestic or any animal, one that walks on two legs, etc. For practicing phonological awareness, the child can react with agreed movements when they identify a syllable, sound at the beginning, middle, or end of a word, etc.

Moro Reflex

Goal: Stimulation of Moro reflex

Description: The child sits on a chair. The task is that when they hear a dog barking, they simultaneously spread their arms and legs, and close them when they hear the sound of a cat.

To make it more fun for the child, you can change the sounds: when they hear the wind, close their arms and legs, and when they hear the waves, spread them...

Note: Games for reflex stimulation must be performed under the supervision of a trained person for primitive reflexes.