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Weather Theme Books for Speech Therapy

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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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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