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Back to School Week! If You Take A Mouse to School

It’s that time of year again.. Back to School! Last week was the first full week with kids, so I began seeing my caseload & working out all the kinks in the scheduling (you know, a school-based therapist’s favorite thing to do!!)


For the first week, I used the book, “If You Take A Mouse To School” by Laura Numeroff to base my therapy sessions around.


I had a big book, too, which made it even more fun!

Building A Mouse House:
At one point in the story, the mouse builds a “Mouse House” out of building blocks.  I adapted this, and used my Jenga blocks as the building blocks.  

My artic kids got to roll a die and the number they landed on was the number of productions they had to give me and the number of Jenga pieces they could pick out to build their Mouse House. You could also work on following directions by giving them instructions on how to build their mouse house!


Roll & Cover/Stamp:


I also made these diy cover-all/stamper pages to go along with the book.  Easy as a general reinforcer activity for a variety of goals! See below for the link to download for free!

Lunch Box Craftivity:

You can use whatever arts/crafts supplies you have on hand.  I happened to have dino stickers I picked up on clearance at Michaels a while back, so it kind of matched the lunch box in the book.  

You can download the lunchbox page along with the roll & cover pages for FREE right HERE

Cariboo for vocabulary:


I am L-O-V-I-N-G that I took the time this summer to make Cariboo card sets for all of my themes throughout the year.  It’s making life easier already! My school supply cards were perfect to incorporate with this book.  I can adapt Cariboo for a lot of different things, but I use it mostly for vocabulary and answering questions.  

You can find the Cariboo cards HERE & read about how I use the game HERE. Jenna at Speech Room News also has a post with a great idea on how she organized these cards– you can read that HERE


Mouse Speak: Articulation

Last Spring, I made a universal articulation companion pack to go along with all the “If You Give A Mouse/If You Take A Mouse” books. It features all of the earlier-developing sounds in all positions of words & can be used with any of the Laura Numeroff “Mouse” books (or any other cute Mouse book, such as “Mouse Paint”). Sounds /p, b, m, n, w, h, t, d, y, k, g, f/ are included.
We had run out of lamination at school, so I didn’t get a chance to prep them in the Spring, and forgot they never got prepped until I went to look for them on that Monday morning– whoops! But I definitely plan to have them ready before I use “If You Take A Mouse to the Movies” this winter! If you want to check them out, you can do so HERE.


What do you do for the first week of school?

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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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