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Do you need a festive Thanksgiving speech therapy book to use in November? Use the book, Run, Turkey, Run by Diane Mayr with your preschool through 1st grade speech therapy caseload. If you need Run, Turkey, Run activities, this blog post will show you ideas for AAC CORE words, sequencing, wh-questions, vocabulary, and more! You won’t have to stress about creating a Run, Turkey, Run lesson plan because this blog post will help you with activity ideas for whole class push-in or small groups.
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You can use this turkey book with preschool through 1st grade to work on various speech and language skills. When you are reading this book to your students with shared book reading strategies and using dialogic reading, this helps with building vocabulary, comprehension, background knowledge, and engagement with the book. Plus, using this book helps frame the extension activities, so you can plan to have more practice with the concepts and storyline of Run, Turkey, Run.
Because we have mixed groups and see students with a variety of speech and language needs, this book can be adapted to cover a lot of goals, including:
In the Themed Therapy SLP membership we provide a variety of turkey speech therapy activities to use with you Thanksgiving themed unit. Including a book cheat sheet, companion activities, and story map for the Run, Turkey, Run book by Diane Mayr. Not only that, we provide a widerange of extension activities to pair with a turkey theme such as verb and vocabulary flashcards, open-ended reinforcers, vocabulary task cards, sequencing short stories, Google Slides with links to videos, songs, and more! Sign up today and let us take lesson planning off your plate.
The fun part about this book is that there is a wild chase between a farmer and the turkey. So you can use this fun song to reinforce the concepts from the book. And, if you need some movement breaks, I love this Turkey Chase video or the Turkey Run! video. Similarl to the book, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, you can use this video to go on a turkey hunt. Learning more about turkeys with YouTube videos is a great way to build background knowledge and cover student’s speech and language goals.
If you have a farm and playhouse toy set, you can re-enact this story and have your students practice their speech sounds with sound-loaded words or phrases. For example, if your student is working on the /g/ sound, switch out run, for “go” or have the farmer say, “I’ll get you.”
Before the turkey can run to a new area of the farm, have your student practice their speech sound 10x.
To get in 100 trials, use these Run, Turkey, Run articulation worksheets that also have speech homework.
Put printable or plush turkeys around your speech therapy room. Have students practice their speech words 10x before they get a clue where the turkey ran and hid. Each time they find the turkey, they have to practice another 10x.
Make turkeys with playdough, pipe cleaners and beads or cereal. Each time your student practices their speech sound, they can put a bead or fruit loop on their feather.
Once you read the book, you want some engaging extension activities that will work on goals, so here are some ideas:
Use a plush turkey to work on spatial concepts, hide around your room to give inference clues or work on who questions by having farm animals walk by the turkey.
If the weather permits, play turkey tag to work on social communication, stop/go, who questions (i.e. Who took my feather?), and turn taking.
Put different colored feathers around your room or outside and have students collect feathers. You can work on colors, the verbs get, collect, find, AAC core words for find, more, look.
Co-teach with your PE teacher to play this fun Turkey Scramble game to work on turn-taking, following directions, go/stop, fast/slow, and lots of other language goals!
Make Run, Turkey, Run mazes with older students and work on speech and language goals while you create. This could even be a great co-teaching activity you can do with a classroom teacher.
In the book, the family has Thanksgiving dinner without a turkey! Plan a push-in or small group lesson around the Thanksgiving holiday.
Create a paper plate turkey craft and write or glue speech or language targets on the back. We provide visual supports and a lesson plan in the Themed Therapy SLP membership for using this craft too.
Do you have a favorite Thanksgiving book you use in your literacy-based speech therapy sessions? Any fun and engaging turkey activities? Let me know some of your go-to books and activities that you plan in the comments.
