Looking for fun activities to use in speech therapy for St. Patrick’s Day? I have your planning covered with this collection of activities that are quick and easy to set up and implement! BOOK: 10 LUCKY LEPRECHAUNS First up, of course, is a book recommendation (my SLP love language). I discovered 10 Lucky Leprechauns last year and it’s now one of my go-to St. Patrick’s Day books. It’s very similar to the Thanksgiving book “10 Fat Turkeys” (which I also love), with each page adding a leprechaun doing a different action (great for -ing verb practice!). Verbs depicted include: -playing a kazoo ..read more

Sneezy the Snowman quickly became a fan favorite once I started using it in therapy a few years ago, and my toddler has been running around shouting “Make me brand new!” for the past week so I think it’s safe to say it’s a hit at our house, too! Repetitive Lines One of the things I love about Sneezy is the repetitive lines throughout the book.  Kids love getting to fill in/join in with repetitive parts of books, which encourages participation and creates a positive experience around reading! (You can read more about the benefits of using repetitive books in therapy in this blog post here ..read more

“10 on the sled” is one of my favorite repetitive books for winter.  The book is sung to the tune of “10 in the bed”, and song books are generally always a hit with my kids!  In a previous post, I wrote about the role of repetitive books in therapy, some of which involved speech sound trials. When looking for books to use for speech sound trials, you want to find ones that provide a lot of repeated opportunities throughout the book to practice, not just one or two. If you’re looking to use “Ten on the Sled” with students with speech sound goals, here’s what you can target! (Note: Th ..read more

We all know reading books is an evidence-based practice to facilitate various aspects of language development, but what about using repetitive books, specifically, in speech and language therapy? Rhythmic and predictable language found in repetitive books help to capture children’s attention, along with being useful in a variety of other ways! 1. Increased engagement Repetition of words/phrases throughout the story creates familiarity and predictability.  This repetition creates more opportunities for engagement because it allows your students to participate in fill-ins or “read” along w ..read more

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 ..read more

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. Patrick’s Day “party” in therapy! What we used: -sparkly green top hats -beanie babies and stuffed animals, or preferred characters from TV shows, etc… -painter’s tape (you’ll need something thicker than scotch tape for it to stick well) -Melissa & Doug wooden cake set -other p ..read more

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 all my materials from Hobby Lobby except the plain gold coins, which I bought a few years prior at Dollar Tree. Following Directions: Start with an empty bin and give directions for what you need to fill it- ie “We need 1 big shamrock and 2 small pom poms.” If they can’t count yet, do on ..read more

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” part of the 5 senses incorporates music and beloved farm animals: Old MacDonald Had a Band! The Old MacDonald variation books are SO great for working on all kinds of sound imitation with your little ones! For “Old MacDonald Had a Band,” there’s musical instrument sounds to imi ..read more

  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 books, which helps with learning story grammar parts and their recall and ability to retell the sequence of events. Here’s what I love specifically about “Bear Wants More”- For starters, like most of the other Bear books, it has repetitive language. In this case ..read more

Sneezy the Snowman quickly became a fan favorite once I started using it in therapy a few years ago, and my toddler has been running around shouting “Make me brand new!” for the past week so I think it’s safe to say it’s a hit at our house, too! Repetitive Lines One of the things I love about Sneezy is the repetitive lines throughout the book.  Kids love getting to fill in/join in with repetitive parts of books, which encourages participation and creates a positive experience around reading! (You can read more about the benefits of using repetitive books in therapy in this blog post here ..read more