Happy Spring everyone! This is a crazy but exciting time of year for me. If you follow my blog, Facebook page, etc. you know that I have an insane amount of preschoolers that are moving up to Kindergarten next school year. That means, I have been working like a crazy woman to get all those evaluations, reports, and IEPs completed before my spring break. Although all of that is very time consuming, I still have to make sure I have some fun (& functional) therapy ideas planned each week. So let's get to the fun stuff….
If you follow me on Instagram (@kristine_lindsay), you have probably noticed that I post what my preschoolers and I have been up to in therapy. As I’m sure many of you know, three and four year olds need a lot of hands on, FUN, new, and entertaining activities. I am a HUGE Pinterest fan and often find a ton of inspiration for therapy on there. You can check out my Speech Therapy Ideas Board by clicking here.
Here are a few of the Spring themed activities that I’ve done with my preschoolers….
Like I always say, I just love those “Old Lady” books. There is one for just about every season (& holiday) which makes it the perfect go-to activity in speech. Last week we used “There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Clover” which you can see in the picture. Since we are talking about Spring AND Easter is right around the corner, “There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Chick” seemed very appropriate for this week. I get a lot of questions about where I got my mini trashcan that I taped the “Old Lady” on to… The answer is…DOLLAR TREE. I also love that so many TpT sellers have companion packs for these great books. For these books, I really like the companion packs from Jenna over at Speech Room News, Jenn from Crazy Speech World, and from Crayons Cuties in Kindergarten. Click on each of the links to check out the packs in their stores!
I LOVE SENSORY BINS (I’m sure many of you do too!). The amount of goals/objectives you can target is amazing not to mention how much fun they can be (oh, AND inexpensive!). I have a post right here on my blog where I mentioned some of the “sensory bins” I’ve used but let’s talk about some of the ways you can use them for Spring. All you need is a plastic bin (you can find tons of these at Walmart, Target, Lowes, etc.), a filler (for spring I like to use black beans because it reminds me of dirt), and some manipulatives, pictures, toys based on whatever you are targeting.
Garden Style Sensory Bin: I have done this in the past and will definitely be doing it again. I have found so many fun things from Dollar Tree such as a shovel, butterfly net, seed packets, watering can, magnifying glass, “toy bugs”, etc. You can throw all of those things in your sensory bin and just wait until you hear the language your little ones will use. Target “wh” questions, following directions, expanding utterances, adjectives, and so so much more. Pair this with any “garden” or fruits/vegetables book (I’m a big fan of the books Tops and Bottoms by Janet Stevens and Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert) you will have a few sessions of therapy planned right there!
Egg Hunt Sensory Bin: This was my most recent Instagram post and I got amazing feedback from all of you! For this bin, I bought some grass filler for Easter Baskets and plastic eggs from yes, you guessed it, Dollar Tree. I made some cards with noun and action pictures to put inside the plastic eggs and a few category boards to sort the cards on. I originally wasn’t even thinking to post this in my TpT store but after hearing how many of you could use this little activity, I decided to go ahead and post it as a FREEBIE! You can grab the Speech & Language Egg Hunt activity by clicking HERE.
Another one of my favorite books is The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I got this adorable pack from Mia at Putting Words in your Mouth. You can find it in her TpT Store by clicking HERE. One of my coworkers last school year also had some really great cards that worked perfectly with this. To take it one step further I dug through my “toy food” and found all of the items from the book and we fed them to the caterpillar (another reason I love my mini trashcan!)
I definitely have a lot more SPRING ideas planned (some old and some NEW) that I will be sharing with you all soon! At the end of this week we are making “Jellybean Edible Playdoh” for group speech and I can’t wait to see how it turns out! Be sure to follow me on Instagram (@kristine_lindsay) and my FB Page: Live Love Speech to see pictures of the results.
Enjoy everyone!
