Last month in preschool I read one of my favorites, There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Shell. We retold the story with pictures from Boardmaker and we made these great “fish tanks”! 
My preschoolers and I had a great time making these little fish tanks! With 3 simple materials you can make them too! Don’t worry I made 31 and not a single one leaked in a backpack! 
In my head, this is what our tanks would look like. But in real life, adding the ‘port hole’ was too labor intensive and took away from the speech/language focus so I ditched it after the first kiddo 🙂 
I used the Pictello App to make a picture story that my students could use! It helps if we can watch the video of each step. The picture above is a screen shot right before they played the movie with each step. Then as we made the tanks, we went step by step following directions. 
The secret to these beauties is this awesome hair gel. The bubbles in it are perfect! I got mine at Wal-Mart for about a buck. You need one bottle for about 6-8 “tanks”. You also need plastic sandwich bags and swedish fish! 
The squeezing was their favorite part! This is one of my pictures from the Pictello instructions! 
They all did really great following the app and adding their fish! We targeted concepts, following directions, articulation, sentence formation, and question generation! 
Some other activities we did include this ocean magnet puzzle. It was really great for new vocabulary and multisyllabic words. 
We also did our photo fish from Super Duper Inc. I have lots of friends working on those tricky velar sounds! We had lots of fun. Any fish activities that you have done in your speech sessions?
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I am reading The Three Little Fish and the Big Bad Shark right now. I did a reader’s theater type activity with my pre-k kids. With my 1st and 2nd graders, we also read the Three Little Pigs and compared and contrasted the two stories.
I haven’t read that one Dana! I will have to look for it at the library! Sound great!
Jenna, I think this is a great idea! I think I will try this with the grandkids!
thanks! lisa
A May craft!
I must read your mind! This is my plan for next week’s therapy!
I love the “There Was An Old Lady” series. I have the “shell” version but have not used it in therapy yet. This is a GREAT idea! Plus anything involving swedish fish makes me smile 🙂
I love this Jenna! Your blog is awesome and I feel so blessed for stumbling across it! I am happy to be your newest follower. =)
I would love for you to visit me when you get the chance.
Heather
Heather’s Heart
Can’t take credit for this one but we taped pictures of sea animals to the bottom of a tablecloth and then draped the tablecloth over a table. Our preschoolers then used scooters to go “snorkeling” under the table. When they came out the other side they told us what they saw! Great for working artic (esp. s and s blends!) and early sentence formulation.
love this!
Jenna,
I love your blog–just a random question–how do you incorporate puzzles into a group w/ multiple students and still being able to elicit enough language? I run into puzzles just turning into a quiet activity. Thanks!
Val
Well with the preschools I have them say a sentence for each catch! Like “I caught a ___” each time. For this week I was focused on vocab with it. Most of the kids didn’t know vocab like ‘squid’, so they had to ask me “What is this?” – which elicits more language! I could also ask them to pick a specific item based on the semantic clues (ie: something green with a shell) to target receptive language. I wouldn’t use it with more than 2 kiddos or youre right it turns into a quiet activity!
I tried out the Swedish Fish activity – maybe it was the hair gel I got, but within an hour, my water had turned pink and the fish were almost dissolve!!
Did you have any concerns that the children would take out their “fish tanks” on the bus and eat those candy fish?
i just made this but instead of candy fish i used real plastic toy fish(minis) it looks great and i also added some little seashells!
Cute Idea!
I think when i make this I will use sequins instead of candy fish.