snowman Archives - thedabblingspeechie

Sneezy the Snowman Story Retell Prop Kit

by thedabblingspeechie | Jan 18, 2022 | Books for Speech Therapy, Therapy Plans

When it comes to choosing a snowman book for your caseload, you want a book that has great pictures, and LOTS of language concepts to target. Plus, you have a lot of students working on comprehension and oral narration, you want a snowman book that targets story elements. Sneezy the Snowman by Maureen Wright ticks off all those boxes for me. It’s a great story that kids LOVE to hear. Today, I am going to share how you can make a Sneezy the Snowman story retell kit to make your sessions more engaging when working on speech or language goals. If you need more snowman-themed book ideas, head to this blog post! Amazon affiliate links are included in this post for your convenience, this means I get a small commission when you purchase anything from Amazon.

What is a Story Prop Kit?

Story prop kits are items related to the book that help children stay engaged during the story. They can be felt characters and vocabulary items for a storyboard or manipulatives related to the story.

Research has shown that students’ comprehension improves when children retell the story in their own words. The two strategies that worked best were children verbally recounting the story and enacting the story given props.

Creating a story prop kit allows you to implement both of these strategies with Sneezy the Snowman!

Can you think of a few kids on your caseload that would love this while working on narration? These stories retell kits can be great for students with shortened attention spans! Or, your kids who love to touch items. Your students will enjoy the activity when it feels more like play!

Make a Sneezy the Snowman story retell prop kit to make working on language concepts and story elements more engaging in your speech therapy sessions.

Dempsey, L. (2021). Examining the validity of three methods of measuring pre-readers’ knowledge of storybook events. Child Language Teaching and Therapy. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0265659021995545

Where Can I Find the Sneezy the Snowman Story Retell Props?

For your Sneezy the Snowman story retell kit, you definitely want a snowman, fire, green mug, hot tub, hot chocolate, and ice cream! Having some kid figurines could be great too.

You can always ask your family and friends on Facebook to see if they have any old toys they would want to donate to you and your caseload. Another way to acquire these toys on a budget is by asking parents on your caseload. There is always the Goodwill and garage sale hunt too! If you need some tips for planning themed therapy lessons on a budget, listen to episode 47 on the Real Talk SLP podcast for more tips. Fortunately, I had most of the items in other playsets!

For my story retell kit, I wanted a plush snowman and found it on Oriental Trading company. But, right now, it is not in stock, so you can find one on Amazon.

Grab a fire from Melissa and Doug camping set or this fisher price version on Amazon.

Use a coffee mug from your house or a cup from one of your tea sets.

Look for a metal tin can from Target, or Dollar Tree to be the hot tub.

If you own the Melissa and Doug ice cream set, just borrow the ice cream cones.

For kids, you can grab the little people sets or just borrow Lego people.

During the story, Sneezy melts and needs to be built again. You can find some felt snowmen kits like this one on Amazon (it’s really big) or you can use the build a snowman file folder printables from my snowman-themed language lesson plan guides.

Join the Themed Therapy SLP Membership

Join the Themed Therapy SLP membership if you want more themed therapy ideas like this snowman story prop kit. We provide 2-3 monthly themed units for your Prek-5th grade caseload including book cheat sheets, no print materials, Google Slides, visual crafts, a toy guide, newsletters for parents and MORE!

Speech Therapy Activities for Sneezy the Snowman

This book is great for story elements, but there are some other great ways you can use this book!

For your students working on CORE words, you can target “like, “put,” “you,” and “more.”

Thre are examples of hot and cold throughout Sneezy the Snowman. You can describe the shades of meaning for hot and cold.

If you have students with s-blend goals, this is a great book to target consonant clusters.

Practice naming items that would go in the hot and cold category group.

Target “where” questions focusing on prepositions for the location of Sneezy throughout the book.

How Would You Use Sneezy the Snowman in Speech Therapy?

Do your students love Sneezy the Snowman? What goals or activities would you do with this story prop kit? I would love to hear your ideas! Whenever I can find new ways to use a set of materials, therapy planning is easier. If you can use this one-story prop kit with a bulk of your caseload, you are saving LOTS of hours of prep work.

Share in the comments your therapy ideas for using Sneezy the snowman!

Need some more snowman ideas? Here are some blog posts to help you plan a snowman-themed therapy unit:

Make your own Sneezy the Snowman Story Retell Prop Kit to work on oral narration as a hands-on speech therapy activity.

Snowman Sequencing Activities to Build Language

by thedabblingspeechie | Jan 13, 2022 | Language, Themed Speech Therapy

When implementing a themed-based approach, you want to use activities that incorporate the words related to the theme as much as possible. It gives your students context with how to process the knowledge of the theme and the vocabulary used with the theme. In many ways, you are building stronger knowledge of the vocabulary because students can categorize and attach word associations to the words being used. Today, I wanted to share with you some ways to use snowman sequencing activities to build language. Plus, I will be sharing some different ways to talk about building a snowman so your students stay engaged!

Hands-On Activities for Building a Snowman

With students that have a shortened attention span or need to be activating their sensory system, there are some hands-on activities that you can do and still incorporate sequencing.

Using white playdough with items such as dried black beans, buttons, sticks, and a foam hat to build a snowman. Students can work on sequencing the steps for making a snowman while building their own. Similarly, you can find a felt snowman building set on Amazon or possibly Dollar Tree. Students can follow directions for the steps to make a snowman.

For more ideas on how to use snowman toys and props in your therapy sessions, check out this blog post.

Use hands on snowman materials to work on sequencing in speech therapy. Check out this blog post for tips on using snowman sequencing activities to build language skills.

Work on sequencing skills using a build the snowman file folder activity. Check out this blog post for more snowman sequencing activities for speech therapy.

If you don’t want a mess, but need a hands-on activity, why not build a snowman as a file folder activity!? You can target sequencing as well as requesting, CORE words, turn taking, and describing. To buy the printables for this activity, head to my TPT store.

Target Sequencing with the Snowman Life Cycle

You can also work on sequencing while talking about the snowman life cycle. This also is a great theme smashing opportunity to incorporate how we get snow! Check out this YouTube video for discussing snow. As you work on the snowman life cycle, you can target verbs, adverbs (i.e. slowly, quickly), antonyms (i.e. hot, cold), basic concepts (i.e. before, after), and speech sounds such as with s-blends, you can target snow, snowman, scarf, stare, slow, stack, and smile.

What other words with your student’s sounds could you target? If you need some visual supports for the snowman life cycle, these are in the snowman language lesson plan guides for K-2 students.

Why not work on sequencing using a snowman life cycle!? Check out this blog post for more snowman sequencing activities you can use to build language.

Snowman Sequencing Activities with Short Stories

Here are some tips for how to use snowman sequencing activities in speech therapy to build language and vocabulary.

Discussing the steps for building a snowman in the context of a short story can help your students relate to the vocabulary when used in context.

You can find snowman short stories on GetEpic such as “Make a Snowman” by Pam Holden. If you need short stories that also have picture sequencing cards, check out the winter short stories set in my TPT store. It not only comes with picture sequencing cards but also has short stories with an answer key and visuals to help you guide the instruction during your sessions.

For more ideas on using short stories with different winter themes, check out this blog post.

Digital Materials to Build a Snowman

If you are looking for some digital materials to work on building a snowman, check out ABCYa. They have a free build a snowman activity that you can work on sequencing the steps for making a snowman. Additionally, you can also target describing, requesting, CORE words (i.e. more, want, look, done, here, etc.), transition words, and grammar structures. For SLPs that love using Boom Cards™, you can use this snowman sequencing activity set to work on tier II vocabulary related to the sequencing activity. Plus, there are 3, 4, and 6 picture scenes to practice the steps for build a snowman. In all of the sequencing Boom Cards™ sets, there are extension activities to work on other language skills related to your snowman theme.

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What tips do you have for working on sequencing skills?

What is working for you when teaching sequencing with your students? I would love to know any tips or strategies that have been helpful, especially for your language impaired students. Share you tips in the comments!

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Snowman Speech Therapy Activities for Early Elementary

by thedabblingspeechie | Jan 10, 2022 | Themed Speech Therapy, Uncategorized

One of the best themes to plan for the month of January is snowmen. Talking about snowmen is so engaging for students! Plus, there are ton of snowman speech therapy activities you can use to cover your Prek-5th grade caseload. Today, I am going to share a round-up of snowman ideas you can use to support your student’s speech therapy goals.

Planning Tips for Using a Snowman-Theme

The most efficient way that I have found to plan by themes is to first pick a book to use with my students. Oftentimes, I will select 2-3 books within the theme to use with my caseload. This allows me to stay consistent with the theme throughout weeks, but have the flexibility to use different books in therapy when needed. Check out this blog post to get tips for selecting snowman books and how to use them in therapy.

Once you have your book selected, you can then look for extension activities to use with the snowman-themed book. For example, if I plan on using a feed the snowman activity, I will try to adapt that activity for many ages and settings. The sensory bin could be great for my small groups and my c0-teaching lessons. Check out how you can set up your push-in therapy HERE.

Need some engaging snowman speech therapy activities that you can adapt for a wide-range of ages and goals? Check out this blog post!

Toys and Tools to Use with a Snowman Theme

Having some snowman-themed toys and props can add some engagement to your sessions! Recently, I wrote a blog post on all of my favorite snowman toys that you can add to your stash. Check it out here.

When thinking about adding new toys to your therapy stash, my best advice is to look at the needs of your caseload. Would this toy be easily adapted for a lot of goals? Is it a toy that helps my students connect with the theme or story? How much use would I get out of the toy?

Those are the types of questions I ask myself before buying materials. There have been occasions when I bought something because it made me excited like these snowman pull-back sleds.

Snowman Videos to Use with Your Caseload

When you are strapped for time, using a YouTube video can be an engaging, quick lesson plan. There are lots of great snowman videos. In the snowman push-in language lesson plan guides, there is a Google Slide presentation included with all the best snowman-themed videos.

For a brain break or a way to transition into a new activity in your sessions, you can use these snowman songs! Here are two of my favorites to use in co-teaching.

Snowman Rhymes and Fingerplay Activities

If you have students that love movement and hands-on activities, you have to try using snowman rhymes in therapy! Using rhymes with props for your snowman unit, you can target many speech and language goals. Check out this blog post from Ms. Gardenia’s speech room, where she shares a fun snowman rhyme and free visuals to use with it!

Snowman Crafts to Use in Speech Therapy

There are a lot of great simple snowman crafts you can use for your small groups and co-teaching lessons. My favorite is using a white paper bag or paper plate and creating a snowman! If you need some free visual supports for following the steps of the craft, grab them in this blog post.

You can make this snowman craft with your mixed groups and have a template for speech and language goals. When you have mixed groups, it’s hard to do crafts that cover all the goals in the group. That’s why you can use one craft template and customize based on your student’s goals.

For more winter craft ideas, check out this blog post.

Snowman Cooking Ideas for Speech Therapy

For your whole class lessons, why not read a fun snowman book and then do a hands on cooking lesson! Here is a FUN marshmallow snowman cooking activity from Kristine Lamb at Live Love Speech. If you need visual recipes for your themed units, Kristine has the best set that will last all year!

Need some snowman speech therapy activities for your early elementary caseload? Check out how you can plan for your mixed groups in this blog post.

Snowman Speech Therapy Activities for Younger Students

If you are needing pre-made language lesson plans to cover your small groups and push-in services, this snowman theme language lesson plan guide, has a Google Slide presentation, parent newsletter, lesson plan cheat sheet, and over 5 small group activities to pair with any snowman book! Plus, it also has to cheat sheet instructions to give to instructional aides or teachers when running a station activity. If you want to increase engagement and have activities that target a LOT of goals, buy this resource for caseload.

It has a build the snowman file folder, snowman picture mats, snowman life cycle visuals, and a feed the snowman activity, just to name a few.

Check out all these snowman speech therapy activities that you can use to plan your small groups and whole class lessons!

Digital Snowman Activities for Younger Students

When working on sequencing skills, using a build the snowman digital activity can target a lot of meaningful language within the context of the snowman theme. This build a snowman sequencing Boom Cards™ set in my TPT store helps you target tier II vocabulary, scaffold by using 3, 4, and 6 picture scenes as well have use extension activities. With the extension activities, you can cover grammar, wh-questions, following directions, and more!

ABCYA has a great FREE interactive build a snowman game that you can use to target requesting, sequencing, describing, and building MLU. What digital activities have you found to be helpful for your younger students? You can also set up a green screen with a winter scene from Google Photos. Then, build your snowman with this felt snowman from Amazon (affiliate links) and make sure your green screen fabric is felt or will allow Velcro to stick to it.

What are your favorite snowman resources to use with your caseload?

Using a snowman theme can be LOTS of fun and filled with tons of opportunities to work on goals. Plus, it is a theme that you can adapt and reuse activities for 2-4 weeks. This makes therapy planning easier because you have to do it less often. If you want to hear more about using a theme longer than a week, check out this Real Talk SLP podcast episode.

Let me know in the comments some of your favorite digital and printable snowman materials to use in therapy!

Have engaging snowman speech therapy activities to use in your themed therapy sessions!

Favorite Snowman Books for Speech Therapy

by thedabblingspeechie | Jan 8, 2022 | Books for Speech Therapy

One way to streamline your themed therapy lesson planning is to start by picking a book for the theme! Once you have a book selected, it’s much easier to come up with activities to use with that theme that also aligns with the book. Many times, a themed book has other opportunities to theme smash. For example, with a snowman theme, a great book to use for theme smashing is Snowmen at Work by Caralyn Buehler. You can use that book to discuss snowmen while also targeting a jobs or community helpers category! Today, I am going to share some of my favorite snowman books for speech therapy and give you some tips for selecting a book for your caseload.

Tips for Selecting a Snowman Book

When picking a book to use with your students, you want to ask yourself some questions:

1. What types of goals do my students have on their IEPs?

2. How long can my students attend to a book?

3. Can this book be adapted to cover a lot of different goals and discussions?

4. Is this a book that my students can personally relate to in their own life?

5. Is this book at their developmental level of interest?

It’s always good to select a snowman book that is going cover a lot of groups as well as serve many different skilled needs. For example, if you have a lot of students working on story retell, comprehension, grammar, and vocabulary, “Sneezy the Snowman” by Maureen Wright may be a great choice. This book follows story elements and has lots of opportunities for targeting vocabulary.

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Similarly, if you have a lot of students working on building MLU and describing goals, using the book, “Just a Snowman” by Mercer Mayer would be a great selection. This book has detailed picture scenes and a variety of verbs to create sentences about what is happening on each page.

Snowman Book Suggestions by Grade Level

If you are looking for snowman books for speech therapy, this blog post has lots of tips for which books to use for different speech and language goals!

When you plan using a themed-based approach, one way to make selecting a book easier is by choosing a book by grade level or target area.

Here are a few snowman book suggestions by grade level (Amazon affiliate links are included):

Prek-1st grade

Just a Snowman by Mercer Mayer

Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner

2nd-3rd grade

Sneezy the Snowman by Maureen Wright

4th-5th

The Biggest Snowman by Steven Kroll

How to Catch a Snowman by Adam Wallace

Skills to Target with Snowman Books for Speech Therapy

It’s always helpful to know why an SLP chooses a book, so I am going to share some reasons why I would use certain books with different groups or ages. Having some examples of how to use a book can make planning therapy easier too! If you need some tips for using shared book reading strategies, check out this blog post HERE.

Snowman Books With Reptitive Text

There Was a Cold Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow by Lucille Colandro or The First Day of Winter by Denise Fleming would be wonderful for targeting sequencing. Students that benefit from the repetitive text would do well with these book choices. And, they both provide opportunities for CORE words such as “give, eat, more, all done.”

If you need visual supports for the old lady book to work on CORE words, comprehension and story retell, grab this story map set of printable and animated Google Slides.

Books that Target Vocabulary, Grammar and Comprehension

Snowman at Work and Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner would be great for working on grammar, categories, answering wh-questions. The pictures are vivid, so you can target adjectives, prepositional phrases, and verbs when building sentences.

Using Books To Work on Narrative Skills and Inferencing

The Snowman by Raymond Briggs is a wordless book that allows you to target inferencing, storytelling, and comprehension. You can also incorporate writing by having students share what they would do with a snowman for a day. There are many opportunities to ask and discuss inferential questions in the book.

Furthermore, The Biggest Snowman by Steven Kroll and Sneezy the Snowman by Maureen Wright are great books for working on story elements and comprehension.

What Snowman-Themed Books Do You Use With Your Students?

What snowman books do you enjoy grabbing off the shelf to use in therapy? I would love to know what your students enjoy as well as some goals you target with the books! You can never have enough books of therapy ideas! Share your favorite snowman book in the comments and what skills you target. If you need some snowman toys or props to use with your books, check out this blog post with ideas for toys!

Must Have Snowman Toys for Speech

by thedabblingspeechie | Dec 18, 2021 | Themed Speech Therapy, Toys for Speech, Uncategorized

When planning your snowman-themed unit, you can add some engagement by grabbing some of these must-have snowman toys for speech therapy. You definitely don’t need all the toys shared today in this post, but if you are looking to add some new snowman toy additions to your therapy stash, here are some of my faves.

Build a Snowman Toys for Speech Therapy

There is so much language you can target with sequencing tasks! Why not work on the sequencing task of building a snowman. You can definitely make your own white playdough with this recipe and grab buttons, sticks, mini hats and accessories to build a snowman. When building the snowman, you can target transition words, verb tense, vocabulary, wh-questions, summarizing, and answering wh-questions.

If you aren’t interested in making your own white playdough, there are several snowman toys for building a snowman. Here are some good snowman toy sets (Amazon affiliate links included):

– Mr. and Mrs. Snowman Set with Floof modeling clay

– Melting Snowman

– Felt Snowman Game Set

–Snowman Stacker Toy from Melissa and Doug Toys

Have some build-a-snowman toys to use in speech therapy for your snowman activity lesson plan!

Ideas for Using the Snowman Felt Game Set

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With the felt snowman game set, you can work on following directions for building the snowman. Once the snowman is built, students can work on identifying colors, describing by attributes, and explaining the sequence in their own words. If you need more ideas for how to use winter sequencing tasks, check out this blog post.

You can also set this up across the speech room and do the snowman-dressing races as a reinforcer. After your students practice their targets, they can do a race to see how fast they can build the snowman. You can have them walk across a plank of wood to work on the basic concept “across.”

After you time the students, talk about who built the snowman the fastest, or slowest as well as discuss the concepts more and less time.

Snowman Toys to Use with Games

Let’s talk snowman toys that can be used as reinforcers or functional communication in speech therapy.

If you own a bowling pin set, add some snowman printables to them. Now, you have a knock the snowman down game! Use these free snowman printables for your bowling pin set. You can also use white paper cups and draw snowman faces to create bowling pins. Stack them into a pyramid and use fake snowballs to try and knock them down.

Using ball poppers in therapy can be very engaging and motivating for students. Did you know that there is a snowman popper toy? It’s the best! There is also another version that pops the balls out of the snowman’s head. And if you have kids obsessed with Pop Its, I even found a snowman version! For SLPs that love using toys with mixed groups, using the popper toy companion cheat sheet will help you have pre-selected targets and ideas for therapy.

To use the snowman popper for speech and language targets, tape pictures to the wall or whiteboard. Your students can try to hit the pictures and then practice their targets. If you need some snowman category images, there are a bunch in the snowman language lesson plan guides.

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More Snowman Toys for Speech Therapy

You still with me? I went on a snowman toy hunt because this is a theme that I use for a whole month! It makes planning so much easier and my students benefit. Check out episode 45 of the Real Talk SLP podcast to find out why using a theme for at least two weeks can help you and your students.

Snowman toys for speech therapy that will increase engagement in your mixed groups!

These Snowman pullback cards from Oriental Trading company can be great as a reinforcer, but they can also target some powerful CORE words. You can work on stop, go, more, again, fun, like, turn, my, you, and all done.

With your speech and language goals, you can set up mini trinkets in a row. Have students see what the snowman passes on his drive. Whatever he passes, those are the items students must practice.

You can also set up cube blocks or sugar cubes and see if your students can knock them down with the snowman cars. Work on the verbs pull, start, go, stop, hit, crash, knock, and watch.

To check out these snowman pullback cars in action, watch this REEL on @themedtherapyslp

I got a snowman plush toy on Oriental Trading company, but I think they are all sold out. Here is another version from Amazon. You can use a snowman toy to work on following directions, basic concepts, and use it with your pretend play scenes. For example, you can make hot chocolate for your snowman, or have an ice cream party with a snowman and friends. Add mini snowman erasers to any task mat or worksheet to make therapy have a hands-on component. I found the snowman erasers on Oriental Trading.

Want to Stay Inspired with Themed Therapy Ideas?

Staying creative with implementing a themed-based approach can be a little daunting at times. One minute you find yourself looking on Pinterest for a themed idea and hours later you come out with 20 different themed ideas, 10 dessert recipes to try, and your kid’s next birthday party. If you want to stay inspired with planning by themes, come join my FREE-themed therapy SLP Facebook group!