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Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

I love Brown Bear week in preschool!  I love this book because it’s so simple, yet there is SO much you can do with it.  Here are some of the things we did this week in therapy to go along with the book!

While reading the book, I had my kids tell me the name of the animal on each page, and also targeted some WH questions by asking them questions about the animals (i.e. “What do dogs like to chew on?” when we got to ‘white dog,’ or “Where do ducks live?” when we got to ‘yellow duck.’).

(link to purchase the book on Amazon)

I love all of the early consonant sounds you can target with the characters in this book, too.. I have a lot of little ones working on /p, b/ sounds, so this book is perfect for them! Purple cat, Brown Bear, Red Bird, Blue Horse, Black Sheep…  I have a lot of kids working on /t, d/, too, so we practiced red bird, white dog, goldfish, purple cat, and yellow duck! (and “water” too when talking about where ducks and frogs might live!).

Brown Bear Roll & Cover:
We used this Brown Bear Roll & Cover page from Making Learning Fun during group artic sessions.

                                                                                                                                                                                                  The kids would roll the die, and say their speech words the same number of times as the number on their die before coloring the animal. Perfect for groups of 2, so one kid could color while the other practiced, and vice-versa.                                                                                                                        A way to get more repetitions out this is after printing out one copy, use white-out on the duplicates of 2 & 3 and instead write 5 & 6 before making more copies, so there’s duplicates of the higher numbers rather than the lower numbers– more opportunities for increased repetitions!
Brown Bear Memory Game:
                                                                                                                                I used these Brown Bear animal cards from 1plus1plus1equalsone’s free printable pack to play “Memory” to target vocabulary.  You could have them match up the animals together, or use pictures of the different animal homes (i.e. cave, pond, farm, etc…) and have them match up the animal to its home.

Work on increasing MLU by having them use a carrier phrase, like “I found….” or tell you the animal sound when they flip over a picture (i.e. “Cat says meow.” “Frog says ribbit!”)




                                                               

                                   Brown Bear on the wall!
I laminated this big brown bear and taped it on a wall for the week. The kids kept asking for it over & over every time they came in the room!

In this picture we were working on speech sounds (I had a group of 2; 1 working on k&g and another working on s-blends).  I had them pull a card, say the word 5x, and then stick it on the bear.  When all of the cards were on there, I had them find a word they had practiced, pull it off, and say it 5x before handing it to me.

I also used it to target associations.  I picked out pairs of cards, had 1 set taped to the bear and 1 set on the floor on the other side of the room.  They had to pull a card off the bear and walk over to the cards on the floor to find the item that belonged with the card on their hand, and then tell me how the items were alike.

You could also work on concepts like /top, middle, bottom/ with the bear by having them put various pictures on different areas of the bear.

Carrier phrases like “Put on ___” or “Take off ____” work well for this, too! Use for increasing MLU or for any apraxic kiddos who you’re using carrier phrases with!



Image Spinner App:  After seeing this Brown Bear post from Speech Room News, I grabbed the Image Spinner App for my iPad (99 cents in the iTunes store).

                                                                                                   
For artic, I had my /p, b, t, d/ kids practice their speech sounds by spinning and saying the names of the characters they landed on.  

For vocab, I had them spin the spinner, tell me the name of the animal, and find the matching picture that was taped up to the big brown bear on the wall (using the cards from the printable pack I mentioned above).  I targeted WH questions by asking them questions about where the animals lived, what sound they make, what they eat, etc…







Another great resource to check out is the Brown Bear Companion Pack from Putting Words In Your Mouth.  I grabbed this during the TeachersPayTeachers back to school sale, and it is FANTASTIC for following directions and basic concepts!




Other ideas:

  • Sort items by features (i.e. 4 legs vs 2 legs, fur/no fur, feathers vs fur, etc..)
  • Target verbs by having students act out each animal (i.e. hop like a frog, bear crawl, fly like a bird).  You could also lay cards out on the floor or taped to the wall and have them spin the spinner, and act out that animal as they move to the card(s).

What are your favorite things to do in therapy with this book??

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We’ve been playing with allll the bug and garden We’ve been playing with allll the bug and garden activities this month up until this week when I shifted more to ice cream.. but I’m happy to share that my companion for “Up in the Garden, Down in the Dirt” is finally up on TpT!!

I love this book because it lends itself so well to SO many play extension activities with bugs, birds, flowers, and vegetable gardens.  We are lucky enough to have an outdoor garden where I work, so the classrooms have all been helping to take care of the plants— the best real life extension activity I could ask for!

The book is also chock-full of s-blends— and isn’t anything loaded with s-blends an SLP staple? 😂 I even made lists for you of all the s blend words (and other frequently occurring sound targets within the book) so you know what words you can target if you’re seeing kids in mixed groups. 

Swipe through to see all the fun hands-on activities you’ll get to work on themed vocabulary with your students— through labeling objects, verbs, object functions, and basic concepts.  Easily target multiple goals at once with activities that target different goal areas simultaneously.

Feeling like your brain is mush by this point in the year and just want someone to give you some other play activity ideas for your theme without having to search allll the places? Gotcha covered ✅  You’ll also get a list of some extra play activities with goal ideas to target within them!

Music creates some of the best connections— and it’s one of the best ways to start out your circle times/push in lessons… but you probably don’t have time to search and find the good garden and bug related songs on YouTube, right? 

Well, good news— You’re covered on that front, too, with a separate pdf just for links to different songs WITH Target goal ideas for each song, too! Download to your iPad and go!

I’ll leave this companion on sale for the next 24 hours (through Friday night) so you can still grab it at a discount for next year even if you’re done with this theme (your future self will thank you 😉)

Link in profile! ➡️ @rockchalkspeechtalk
If you’re looking to add some diversity to your If you’re looking to add some diversity to your bookshelf with May’s garden + bug themes, check out these 4 garden books featuring black or Hispanic characters!

1- “Plants Feed Me” - Short and simple text to explain where fruits and veggies come from and the different parts of the plants we eat.

Kids work together to take care of the garden (pick, water, dig, plant, etc.. great for verbs!) No main character, but features kids who are Black, white and Hispanic.

2- Lola Plants a Garden:  Lola wants to plant a flower garden. Her mom helps her through the planning steps. Lola reads books about gardens, chooses her favorite flowers, makes a list, buys seeds, then plants them. She waits and waits, then finally her plants grow! 

This book lends itself to activities that target sequencing, gardening verbs, and object functions. Lola makes a flower book while she waits for her real ones, so art supplies AND gardening tools are depicted in this book— perfect for object function targets!

3- Miguel’s Community Farm: Great book for comparing/contrasting!Miguel is looking for sunflowers, so the book starts off describing all the features of a sunflower.

On each page, Miguel sees a plant that shares a feature of a sunflower and wonders if he’s found them. However, the book then describes one way the plants are different, too (Sunflowers have yellow petals.  Artichokes have petals, too (similarity), but they’re green, not yellow (difference).

Miguel has 2 dads, who aren’t a prominent part of the book but are part of the 1st and last page illustrations.  The last page also depicts a garden party with Miguel’s friends, who are of varying ethnic backgrounds and physical abilities. 

4- Amara’s Farm: Same author/illustrator as Miguel’s Community Garden (featuring the same friends at the end!), and another compare/contrast book in the same format. 

Amara is searching for pumpkins on the farm, but this could fit into a Spring garden theme since it compares/contrasts produce. There’s also a lot of bugs in the illustrations, making it easy to fit into a bug and garden combo theme, too!

Did you find any new books to check out? If you did, share w/ another SLP/teacher friend!
You asked, so here it is! A post about allllll the You asked, so here it is! A post about allllll the things we were able to work on with this St Patrick’s Day “party” we did last week! ☘️💚 

Swipe through ➡️ to see it broken down into separate parts! It can cover so many areas from speech sounds/ syllable shapes, play imitation, to WH questions, following directions, and categorizing!

Have a friend that would love this? Be sure to share this post and send it their way!
Who else loves interactive books?! These are some Who else loves interactive books?! These are some of my favorite things to make because they’re SO versatile for use across your caseload! You can use this one for…

➡️simple inferences
➡️labeling animal vocabulary 
➡️who questions
➡️what questions
➡️core vocab like “turn” “on” “not” “look” “see” “play” and “eat.” ➡️imitating animal sounds (great for CV and CVCV syllables) 
➡️yes/no questions

I’ve also been pairing “Let’s…” and “It’s…” phrases with my kids who are gestalt language processors working on mitigation (Let’s turn the page! Let’s see who it is, It’s a pig/cow/chicken etc…)

Swipe through to see some sample pages and to hear what other people are saying about this book!
TIP OF THE DAY: Print your science experiment visu TIP OF THE DAY: Print your science experiment visuals or cheat sheets 2 to a page to have a small, handy version in front of you to reference for yourself without taking up extra space! 

Speaking of space… Since we all know SLP workspaces can come at a premium in a school… what’s the worst place you’ve had to do therapy?

I haven’t had any seriously awful ones, but one that comes to mind was probably in the preschool/kindergarten pod, at a table just behind a noisy book fair setup.  That was the day one of my kids loudly asked me “Why you got a stick?” But she did d/st blends so it did NOT sound like “stick” and I was mortified and thought “Welp this is how I lose my job” 😂🤣 

Tell me yours below! ⬇️
Tell me with an emoji! Do you plan… 🌼 Just b Tell me with an emoji! Do you plan…

🌼 Just before a session

1️⃣ 1-2 weeks at a time

🦋 Have a weekly theme but wing it from there

😅 lol what’s planning

I always find the wide range of differences between all of us so interesting!
Story props are one of the best ways to keep kids Story props are one of the best ways to keep kids engaged during book reading- and reenacting a story with props is one of the strongest predictors of story comprehension!

Make sure you grab these free story visuals from my TPT store for Little Blue Truck’s Valentine for your therapy this week, and pair them with your farm toys! We ❤️ Little Blue Truck at home, too!

You can find these visuals at the link in my profile or let me know if you want me to DM you a direct link!
10 on the Sled has been my lifeline for planning t 10 on the Sled has been my lifeline for planning therapy since coming back from Christmas break, when every day I never know which kids will be out, which coworkers will be out, or who’s caseload I’ll be covering when I have said cancelations!

It’s been a minute since I’ve uploaded anything to TPT, and I’m super stoked about getting this 10 on the sled unit out to you!

When I was in the schools, it was always a challenge to find enough time to push in to the preschool rooms— there was always centers and literacy/language small group time, but when they’re only there for 3 hours (with recess in there, too) and there’s 30 kids to see during those 3 hours.. those two times are definitely not enough!

And, even though you’re adaptable and can make just about anything be a language activity.. sometimes it’s nice to come in with a plan vs crossing your fingers that whatever is happening during that time is relevant to you.  But, you also want to be respectful of the teacher’s focus during certain times of their day, too!

Juggling all the things.

So, when I create materials for you, I create things you can use to push in during even more times of the day to give you even more windows of opportunity.

▶️Story props to use with the class if you’re pushing in during whole group

▶️ Size concept play dough creation mats that you could use if you’re going in during a math center time.  Compare sizes.  Count how many long and short, big and small pieces you need.

▶️Fine motor-based activities like tracing lines, creating with popsicle sticks, and play dough pages so that maybe you can be a station during sign-in in the morning, too, after they work on their name with the teacher or OT!

The materials are so adaptable, though, that you can push in or pull out, use individually or in a small group, and lots of the pages can be used to target multiple goals at once.  Using real objects with the activities helps keep it play-based, too, to keep your little ones engaged!

So, whatcha think? Ready to check it out? Head over to the link in my profile or let me know if you want me to DM you the link!

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