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Weather Theme Books for Speech Therapy

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… Read More

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St. Patrick’s Day “Party” Theme

St. Patrick’s Day “Party” Theme

So many fun St. Patrick’s Day sensory bin fillers are in the craft stores right now! One of the fillers I added last year to my St. Patrick’s Day sensory bin were sparkly green top hats.  I ended up pulling them out of the bin this year to use for another activity with beanie baby/stuffed animals to have a St…. Read More

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St. Patrick’s Day Sensory Bin for Preschool Speech Therapy

St. Patrick’s Day Sensory Bin for Preschool Speech Therapy

Do you use a St. Patrick’s Day theme with your preschoolers? Keep reading for ideas on how to use ONE sensory bin to address a variety of goals! I first put this bin together a few years ago, challenged myself to use it for as many goals as possible, and found it was easier than I initially thought! I bought… Read More

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Old MacDonald Had a Band: Circle Time

Old MacDonald Had a Band: Circle Time

If you’re a preschool SLP, chances are, you base therapy off of themes being used in the classrooms you serve. One of the first themes a preschool classroom usually uses besides a “Back to School” theme is an “All About Me” theme.. which can include body parts and the 5 senses! One of the books I love for the “hearing”… Read More

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“Bear Wants More” activities for Speech Therapy

“Bear Wants More” activities for Speech Therapy

  Spring is here, which means it’s time to pull out my favorite “Bear” book of the whole series… “Bear Wants More.” I love using book series like the Bear books or the Turkey books throughout the year because the characters, and, in the case of the Bear books, the setting, become familiar and the style is similar throughout the… Read More

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Simple Itsy Bitsy Spider Speech Therapy Activities for Little Learners

Simple Itsy Bitsy Spider Speech Therapy Activities for Little Learners

It’s April, and your preschool classrooms are probably doing a weather unit. This was always one of my favorite themes in the Spring, but, also with Spring time comes the end-of-year sprint with 5,000 evaluations, between annual IEPs, birth-to-three services initial evaluations for kids turning 3 in the spring and summer, kindergarten transitions, etc… which leaves basically no time to… Read More

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Is this book in your ocean themed collection yet? Is this book in your ocean themed collection yet? I *finally* checked it out this summer and I’ve been using it with almost everyone!

This book works great for…

⭐️sp and sw blends (repeated lines “I spy” and “Swim away”)

⭐️long a sound (“way” is repeated on every page) and I used “hey!” instead of “hello!” on each page

⭐️ Bilabials: I seem to always have 1-2 kids these last few years working on bilabials! “Me” is on every page, and you can use “bye” instead of “see ya later” on each page, too. The last page has tons of bilabials! (up up up, deep, mama (x3), me)

⭐️initial /d/ if you have a backer (down and deep are repeated on each page)

⭐️CV words “hi” and “me” (and “bye” if you use that instead of see ya later

⭐️Core words: down, in, I, see, look, me, go (when I pair with a sensory bin, I also use “like” “get” and “out”

⭐️Repetitive Lines: Makes it more engaging when the kids can chime in and “read” it with you!

⭐️Verbs: I love a book that has actions to act out on each page! Movement always helps keep my kids’ attention in sessions and especially at circle time in a bigger group!

⭐️Describing the ocean animals

⭐️Comparing and Contrasting ocean animals

Literacy based therapy is the easiest way to structure therapy sessions- centering it around a book always sparks ideas for play activities to use with and after the book to work on goals, too!
A Camping Spree with Mr Magee is always one of my A Camping Spree with Mr Magee is always one of my go-to books for a camping theme! 

⭐️ Full of s-blends and initial /k/ opportunities, it’s a great choice for when you have to have mixed speech and language groups (and who doesn’t have kids working on those sounds?!)

⭐️ Lots of opportunities for pronoun + be verb + -ing verb structure sentences, and regular past tense verbs, too!

⭐️ Lots of AAC core word modeling opportunities

⭐️ Multiple opportunities for “why” questions which aren’t always easy to come by!

⭐️ Rhyming text that has a great flow to it— especially love this during whole group!

⭐️ annnnd they make s’mores in the book, which is *obviously* a necessity in any camping theme 😂

Take a look at the mini unit with printables you can use for circle time and small group therapy- I just updated it so redownload from TPT if you already own it! I added ingredient icons and sequencing/retell pictures for the science experiment, 3 sets of Cariboo cards, and basic concept play dough mats for this unit to help you have even more of your goals covered with super easy planning!

We “packed the camper” at circle time this week and it was a hit! Easily adaptable for different language skills, too— Target receptive id or identifying based on descriptors like function, appearance, location, etc! 

Find it on TPT with the link in profile ➡️ @rockchalkspeechtalk
Imagine using one book to plan out several play ba Imagine using one book to plan out several play based therapy sessions to target your goals… yes please! ✅ 

As promised… several different play expansion ideas to go with “The Little Ice Cream Truck” book! 

“The Little…” vehicle books are QUICKLY becoming one of my favorite book series because of all the play activities you can pair with them, the sing-song tunes, and the representation of different skin tones and physical abilities. ❤️

Tell me if you’re using this book this summer, too!
Take a peek inside my ice cream themed bin! 🍦 Take a peek inside my ice cream themed bin! 🍦 

Between these toys, the books I’ve used, and a few extra people/animal toys to pair with the specific books, I was able to stretch this theme *easily* across 2 weeks.  The kids all loved it! 

Story props are a great way to increase engagement during book reading, and using props is a research-based strategy, too, for aiding in comprehension. Win-win! 

Tell me below 👇🏼 what your favorite ice cream toy or book is!
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!
Sharing a super easy sensory bin the kids helped m Sharing a super easy sensory bin the kids helped me make for our sessions last week! We used it with an Earth Day book but it’s perfect for all of your upcoming garden themes, too! 

Building the sensory bin with me was a great way for my pre verbal kids to work on motor imitation, and the shredded paper stays together in clumps so it was easy to pull it out all at once to then get the beans underneath when I was cleaning it up. Made it easy to take apart and rebuild this sensory bin over and over!

My grandpa actually used to do gardening work for people after he retired. He gave me a plant after we moved to our first house and told me it would always remind me of him bc it would long outlive him. He underestimated my ability to kill even the heartiest of plants and was appalled when he found out it died 😂😅 

Do you have a green thumb 👍🏻 or do plants not stand a chance 🚫 at your house like me?
We’ve been L O V I N G this Worm Weather sensory We’ve been L O V I N G this Worm Weather sensory bin! 

Book itself: 
*super simple, just a few words on each page
*rhyming text
*short enough for my younger kids with a short attention span but able to be expanded upon with the illustrations, too
*verbs (describing picture scenes)
*some opportunities for predicting and inferring too

Sensory Bin targets:
*general game for speech sound targets: practice words, feed the bird
*size concepts: big and little, long and short
*compare/contrast: Pull out 2 straws.  How are they the same? How are they different? (Colors, length)
*core words: eat, put, in, get, out, see
*VC words: eat, out, in
*carrier phrases: “It’s a…” “eat the ___” “I found a…” “I picked a…”

Is this book on your shelf yet? Let me know what your favorite rainy day book is!

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