Reading books with children encourages a love for literature, provides multiple opportunities to build vocabulary in a meaningful way, and an engaging way to build speech and language skills. These are a few of my favorite Spring-themed books and a short-list of targeted goals that can be addressed using the books.
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Frog
by Lucille Colandro
SOUND SYSTEMS: Target velars, fricatives, glides, and consonant blends easily with this adorable story! Students can even practice carryover of their sounds (k, g, s, l, sh, th, r, blends) while targeting language concepts too.
LANGUAGE: Target identification and labeling of basic vocabulary found in the print and in the pictures, work on wh-questions and yes/no questions, description of items, irregular past tense verbs, and practice sequencing and story retell!
Too Many Carrots
by Katy Hudson
SOUND SYSTEMS: Target velars, fricatives, glides, and consonant clusters (k, g, s, sh, th, l, r, clusters) easily with this cute story about a little rabbit with too many carrots and some wonderful friends.
LANGUAGE: Target semantic features (functions, part/whole, description), adjectives, answering wh-questions, and story retell!
Bear Wants More
by Karma Wilson & Jane Chapman
SOUND SYSTEMS: Target velars, fricatives, glides, and consonant clusters (k, g, s, sh, th, l, r, clusters) in this story. Students can work on the generalization of their articulation skills while summarizing the story.
LANGUAGE: Target vocabulary building for adjectives, using context clues to build vocabulary for Tier II verbs, and answering wh-questions!
If you do not want to go through the books and make your own lists, I have created an easy cheat sheet for articulation words and language concepts you can target for each book! You can grab your free cheat sheet below.