There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Books!

This week is my first full week back at school.  While I do miss lazy summer days (It's only day 3 and I'm already tired of having to plan out my work outfits every night...), I have to admit I love seeing and working with all my kids again.  It has been great seeing how many of them have grown in their speech and language over the summer!  For our first week back, I decided to use the story, "There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Books" in preschool!

If you don't own a copy, you can purchase it for under $5 on Amazon!

The first thing I did was make a tissue box Old Lady.  Preschoolers LOVE feeding ANYTHING into tissue box characters.  Seriously.  I'm not sure what it is, but they love 'em so I keep making 'em!

I used this one from Practically Speeching

We started out by reading the story.  While reading, we worked on WH questions and vocabulary (i.e. "What is she swallowing on this page?" "Where is the old lady sitting?" "Who is sitting on the bench with her?" "Where does a school bus take you?" .. lots of opportunities for answering questions!

After we were done, I went through the book again, without reading, but just showing each page so the kids could pick the right pictures to sequence the story.  For each page, the kids got to take turns picking the right picture and feeding it to the old lady.  I used the picture cards from 3Dinosaurs School Printable Pack (Part 1) and had them laminated.

The pack includes cards for various other school supplies not mentioned in the story, as well.  We used these cards to work on a variety of things, such as object functions (expressively-- picked a picture to feed the lady, then told me what you do with it;  receptively-- put 3 pictures in front of them and asked them "Which one do you use to..." and they had to pick the right one to feed it to the old lady).  We used them to play Memory (you could use the larger pictures in the pack to play Go Fish) to work on vocabulary goals.  

In addition to those things, we worked on identifying items by feature (i.e. "Which one has pages you can read?" "Which one has ink inside of it?")  and did articulation drills by simply feeding the old lady their speech cards with their target words on it, after they said the word x amount of times.  The book lends itself well to working on bilabial sounds (pen, pencil, bus, backpack), so if you have any kiddos working on those sounds at the beginning of words, you can practice them as you're reading the book!  

I also created a short and sweet (freebie!) activity to work on associations.  

It has a folder and paper theme-- just have your kids play a game and find a match for items that belong together before they can feed the two cards at a time.  Or, as a variation, you could put just a few matches in at a time, have your kids pull two cards out of her mouth (like she's "coughing up" cards, just like she "coughed up" the backpack at the end of the story!), and tell you if they go together.  Grab it here!

You could also work on describing by using the school supply pictures (or even the associations pictures) as your stimulus pictures.  

I also love love love these adorable "Granny Says" cards for following directions from Crazy Speech World to go along with any of the Old Lady books! Grab them for free in her TpT store!

When I'm short on time, adapting a few simple things to target a variety of goals is key for me! What are some of your favorite activities to use with this book??