When the Spring weather starts to appear, so do all my favorite spring books. The book In the Tall, Tall Grass by Denise Fleming is a book you can use to target a TON of vocabulary and language goals. Plus, it goes perfectly with an insect theme! Today, I wanted to share how you use a In the Tall, Tall Grass speech therapy sensory bin to work on story retell and other receptive and expressive language skills. (Amazon affiliate links included for your convenience.)
In The Tall Tall Grass Speech Therapy Sensory Bin
- Grab a bin or container of some kind to use. The Dollar Store has metal tins, or you can find a container at Target that has clasps.
- Black beans for dirt (or anything you can find that can look like dirt)
- Green tissue paper, pasta dyed green, or shredded green paper for stuffing presents (I found some at the Dollar Spot)
- Small insects that you can find at The Dollar Spot, sometimes Target Dollar Spot, at Michael’s where they sell Toobs, or on amazon with the insect Toob set, rabbit and frog in the Pet Toob, a bat from the Wild American Toob set, and the bird toob set for the hummingbird.
- For all you SLPs on a budget, you can find printables from the book at Simply Speech and use those in the bin.
Another way to make “grass” for your sensory bin is to dye pasta green. I posted a quick video tutorial on my Facebook Page that you can watch and see how easy it is to make!
Insect Speech Therapy Activities to Pair with the Book
If you need more bug speech therapy activities to pair with the book, In the Tall, Tall Grass, you can use the insect language lesson plan guides to take the stress away from planning small groups and co-teaching sessions. Grab it HERE. Below are some of the activities included. You also get cheat sheets, a parent newsletter, Google Slides, and tips for setting up your push-in lessons.
In The Tall Tall Grass Speech Therapy Ideas for Articulation and Phonology
Articulation – practice your students speech sounds with the items in the bin. You can use simple sentence frames that have your student’s sound. Here are some examples:
- I spy _______ /s-blends/
- I see _______ /s/
- I caught _________ /k/
- I will get _________ /g/
- I like to play with _______ /l-blends/
Can you think of any more functional articulation carrier phrases?

In the Tall Tall Grass Activities for Language

- Story retell – Work on answering questions from the book and retell what bugs and animals you saw in the tall grass.
- Grammar – Work on the verbs: hide, fly, crawl and see while playing with the items in the sensory bin.
- Vocabulary – Have your students describe the insects/animals by attributes. Sort the insects and animals into two category groups. Or classify the objects by the insects/animals that can fly/have wings vs. those that crawl.
- Basic Concepts – Target the concepts in/out, above/below, and next to the insects and animals in the bin.
- Functional Communication – Work on initiation, turn-taking, requesting for items, making comments, protesting, sharing an opinion, or asking to be “all done” with an object.
How Would You Use the Book In the Tall, Tall Grass in Your Speech Therapy Sessions?
How would you use the In the Tall Tall Grass book? What other spring books or sensory bins have you used? I would love to know!!
Check out all my sensory bin ideas HERE. Need more Spring themed therapy ideas? Here are some blog posts that you will love with a Spring theme:
Spring Speech Therapy Ideas For The Creative SLP
Spring Crafts for Speech Therapy
Play Themes for the Spring Months
Plant Life Cycle Activity with Flower Sensory Bin
Need more sensory bin ideas? Check out all my sensory bin resources and therapy ideas on my Sensory Bin page or you can follow my sensory bin board on pinterest.

I shreddded green paper in the paper shredder and it worked great as well
That is an amazing idea!
for //f/ carrier prhase: I found
for final /v/: I have