As I have dabbled with different books to use in language therapy with my younger crowd, I have found that “doggies” are a big hit and motivating for communication!  I have one little preschooler on my caseload that loves “doggies” and all animals.  She is always bringing a toy to the therapy room to show me her “stuff”.  I love it because her initiation of communication and MLU increases because she is so motivated by her talking about her toys!  She inspired me to create activities for this great book, Move Over, ROVER! By Karen Beaumont.  This book is great because it has a fun surprise in the end that gets lots of laughs.  I also love using this book because it has a repetitive story lines and great visual pictures.

There are lots of vocabulary activities to go with this book.  I made vocabulary cards that you can hang in your room to review during or after reading the story.  There are Venn diagrams for comparing/contrasting animals from the story.  I also made an animal category visual poster to work on naming animals.  You can also work on answering yes/no such as “was the chicken in the story?” along with following directions receptively/expressively.  For example, you can say “point to the animal that is below the frog?” or “which animals have tails?”.

I made some grammar activities targeting singular/plural tense, past/present verb sort and past, present and future tense verb sorts.

There are also lots of comprehension tools and resources to work on story retell, increasing MLU and answering comprehension questions.  In the pack there are a list of comprehension questions to ask during or after the story along with sentences strips with phrases from the book to work on retelling the story.  You can assign each student a strip or have them try to remember the order the animals went into the doghouse.  I have also included character cards and a doghouse to work on retelling the story or you could make your own doghouse!  Unfortunately, I didn’t have a good box at home, so I haven’t made my own doghouse, but am planning on making one when I get back to work from Spring Break (which is tomorrow).  Here are a couple of links on how to make your own doghouse out of a cardboard box.  The things you could target with this doghouse are prepositions, pretend play, taking turns, creating a story and verb actions!  Here are the links for making a Cardboard Doghouse or try to make a decorated doghouse.

Many of my younger kiddos who have persisting phonological processes also have delays with their phonological awareness, so I made some quick warm up activities to work on phonological awareness with words from the book.  They are great little warm ups that only take a few minutes each session.  There are also word family flash cards that students can sort in the correct word family.

I am really excited about the 3 games I created to use with your articulation or language kids.  I made a list of articulation words from the story and there are A LOT of s-blends.  Reading this story to your students exhibiting cluster reduction can act as an auditory bombardment task and then you can play my /s-blend/ doggy game.  The student to collect the most doggies is the winner!  Watch out for those stinky skunks because then you have to put one of your cards back.  If you get a doggy bone, you get an extra turn!  Cards include:  6 /sn/, 6 /sl/, 6 /st/, 6 /sk/, 6 /sw/, 6 /sm/, 24 final position /s-blend/ word cards with pictures (60 cards total).

I created two game boards that you can use to play.  The first game board needs to help ROVER find his doghouse.  Students practice their articulation or language target and then get to take a turn.  My second game board is to help Rover find his dog bones.  Every time a student lands on a square that has a dog bone, he gets a dog bone to put in his bowl.  The student with the most dog bones wins!  If you land on a skunk, you have to put a dog bone back because the “stinky skunk smell” made you drop your bone and run away!!

I also made a visual perspective taking poster to work on what Rover was thinking throughout the book.  It is a fun way to also come up with silly and cute dialog thought bubbles that can then be transferred over into writing activities for your older students.  You can grab this cute pack HERE.

I also wanted to make a FREEBIE activity to share with you all because I have surpassed 800 on my TPT store and well on my way to making it to 800 facebook likes soon!  Thanks for all your support and kind words.  I thought it would be cute to create a following directions activity we all know doggies don’t always want to listen to their owners! Help ROVER earn some dog bones by following directions.  Every time you get a direction correct, you earn a dog bone card.  The student with the most dog bones is the winner!

You could play “Follow the dog trainer”.  One student acts as the “trainer” and the other students are the “dogs in training”.  The trainer gives the dogs commands that they must follow.  If they don’t follow correctly, then they are out!  You can also play like “Simon Says” and if they follow a command when the person doesn’t say “The trainer says….” then they are out!  Included are one step, two step and 3 step directions.  I have also included a sheet of 2-step directions that uses before/after as well as blank sheet to make up your own.  I hope you can use this FREEBIE!

Leave a comment below and I will pick two lucky winners to win this great pack!!  I will pick a winner tomorrow.  Good luck all my fellow SLP’s.