Weather is one of my favorite Spring themes! Today’s post is about some favorite weather-themed books for therapy with quick and easy book pairing activities for you. Books are SO helpful in structuring my therapy and getting ideas flowing- do they do the same for you?
First up on the list..
1. Bear Feels Scared: The beloved Bear series… in this one, Bear gets lost in the woods during a storm and his friends have to search the woods to find him!
Therapy idea: do a flashlight hunt. Pretend you are Bear’s friends searching through the woods, like they do with a lantern in the book. Search for targeted speech sound words, or, hide a bear around the room to search for with a flashlight, to work on following directions and prepositions.
2. Goodnight, Little Blue Truck: Another one of my favorite series… Little Blue’s barnyard friends are all scared of a thunderstorm and ask to hide out with him until the storm blows over.
Therapy idea: This book pairs well with ANY of your farm materials. The book does use concepts “in” “out” “over” and “under”, which I have activities for in my Little Blue Truck Boom Card deck.
During play, use your blue truck (did you grab the wooden truck from the Target dollar spot around Valentine’s Day? If not, tape a blue truck to the side of a shoebox-style bin, and set the bin on top of a few large blocks on each end (like the wooden blocks most prek teachers have in their classrooms) so it’s elevated. Practice placing farm animals in/out/under the truck!
3. Worm Weather:
This is perfect rainy day-themed book for some of your younger preschoolers who may have a harder time sitting for a longer story (but honestly, I think it’s great for any preschooler!) This is a super simple book with just a few words on each page (e.g. drip drop, skip and hop” “splish splash, sidewalk dash” “big stomp” “puddle swamp” “bright flash!” “thunder crash!”) and rhyming text.
The illustrations are great, too- so you can easily expand on the book’s text to work on verbs by describing the picture scenes. There’s even some opportunities for predicting or inferring!
-Therapy idea: cut some colored plastic straws of different lengths to make “worms” and put them in a sensory bin (either beans for dirt or Easter grass).
Use child-size play tweezers (ask your OT to borrow if you need to!) and pull them out. Compare sizes. Is this worm long or short? Which one is longer/shorter? He was hiding “under” the dirt. You took it “out.” As you pull them out, feed them to a bird!
(I made a free bird mouth printable for you here)
4. Little Raindrop:
-This book is a great, kid-friendly explanation of the water cycle and has beautiful illustrations! It also has a great rhythm with the rhyming text- a win for embedding in some phonological awareness skills! I love all the books we’ve read in this series!
-Therapy idea: Use my raindrop articulation printable craft, or, tear up pieces of blue paper and glue onto a large raindrop drawn on construction paper. Students get pieces as they practice x number of targets, or they get x number of pieces after giving x number of descriptors for a weather-related item.
5. Little Cloud:
A little cloud likes to do his own thing- when they go up, he goes down. He changes into different shapes along the way until he decides that he wants to play with friends. They all join together to make one big rain cloud!
-Therapy idea: Draw target words in shaving cream. My kids LOVE playing in shaving cream, though it can definitely get a little messy.
6. Kite Day
Bear and his friend Mole excitedly rush to build a kite on a windy day. But, storm clouds roll in and the stormy weather breaks the kite! Bear and Mole are upset until they see that their broken kite that got stuck in a tree is providing shelter from the storm for a nest of baby birds! The book uses fun sounds like “whiff whiff” “huff puff” “zoom” “rumble rumble” and “chirp chirp” and has great verbs like constructed, measured, cut, drew, collected, and raced.
Therapy Idea: make your own kite! Draw a diamond on a large sheet of construction paper and have your students decorate their own. You can work on describing, requesting, getting materials after x trials of a speech sound target. Use big and small items (e.g. large and small pom poms, large and small stickers) to work on concepts. Give directions re: where to decorate (for example, “Make some dots at the top” if you are using dot markers as an option to decorate)
Did I miss any of your favorite weather books?
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