PictureWriterPlus app for iPhone and iPad

PictureWriter lets a a child write with pictures. There is a row of small category buttons. Touch one of them and the you hear the name of the category and see it printed on the bottom half of the screen. Another row of bigger pictures appears. These are the picture words. If you touch a picture word and push it forward, the word appears in the text area. If you touch and release a popup window appears that shows the word, and variations of it (in most cases), and a Spanish translation. Pressing a word button on the popup adds the word to the text area.

There are also buttons along the side of the text area to add punctuation, and to backspace or to move forward and back without deleting. If you need something from the regular keyboard, touching inside the text area will cause it to appear.

The word pronunciation can be turned on or off. The text can be saved, loaded or emailed.

Besides having categories to organize words, PicturewriterPlus also allows you to display picture words by their first letter, or their first two letters.

PicturewriterPlus has over 1000 picture words, or 3000 total with the variations in 34 categories. To avoid overwhelming children you can set a level to restrict the number of words. The levels are 1 to 26. Level 1 includes 242 picture words and includes words most frequently used by preschool children. Each level after that adds 30 - 50 words, generally in order of their frequency of use.

PictureWriter can provide writing to support to beginning writers, to those with limited typing skills, and to those whose first language is other than English, expecially Spanish speakers who were able to read in Spanish.

PictureWriterPlus can also be used as a text editor by anyone. Besides the convenient keys to move forward and back in your text, it also includes Airprint support if you have a compatible printer.