“In the Tall, Tall Grass” by Denise Fleming is one of my favorite spring books for speech therapy in preschool. You might think that with a caseload of all preschool, lesson planning is pretty easy! One level – one activity? I wish it was that easy! I’m planning for kiddos who are just turning 3 and non-verbal all the way up to kindergarteners who are in their last month of preschool. Here is a peak of what is in my rolling cart this week.
First, we made these Tall Tall Grass crafts that I first posted way back in 2012!
This year I grabbed google images for the real images instead of Boardmaker pictures.
We read the book back and looked for the animals in our grass!
The kids love the sentence strip at the top because they can ‘read’ it for each word.
My lower level students work best for ‘work’ tasks. They rock at putting things ‘in’ or helping ‘clean up’. The trick is to figure out how to harness that into a vocabulary task. I used some old easter grass and a bucket of bugs this week. We put the bugs into a bug catching container using nets, tweezers, and tongs.
Even some birds, ducks, and Lego men snuck into the bucket.
Verbal friends worked on labeling with single words. Nonverbal friends worked on core words with their AAC devices: out, more, in, me, you. Some friends used the Go Talk 9 loaded with animal words. This let them hear a model before attempting to verbalize.
We even sorted the animals into two groups! Wings and No Wings!
We paired these two activities with two interactive books out of my new Spring Interactive Book Set. 
The catching bugs version is perfect to pair with the bucket of bugs!
I also made an IVB that is a companion to The Tall, Tall Grass!
The book starts backwards! Grass covers each page and then the children can remove the grass and place it on the icon bank on the right side.
Happy Spring! I hope you try some of these activities for one of my favorite books! What other ideas do you have for the grass?!
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Hi Jenna,
I love your ideas. Your bug search activity inspired me to create a smaller-scaled version. I used a shredder to make tall grass out of green butcher/bulletin board paper and filled sandwich bags with the ‘grass’. I added plastic bugs and other items that had target sounds in their names (5 items seems to be a good number). I used small erasers in shapes of ice cream cones, soccer balls, footballs, etc from my treasure box. I had a list of the items for each bag to make sure we found them all. I gave hints about items they had not found to keep them searching and thinking. The kids had fun searching for their items in the tall grass. I had them keep the bag closed to contain the mess. I sent the bags home for homework/practice but have thought about making some to keep that target certain sounds.
Keep up the good work.
LOVE this idea!
Love the interactive books and what a cute craft. Thanks for including some ideas for those nonverbal and minimally verbal students. I am also a preschool based SLP, so I understand what you mean about the lesson planning. There is so much development going on at this age! You end up with quite the range in abilities! But my nonverbals and minimally verbals are always a challenge to engage in similar activities as my verbals. Thanks for giving me some ideas and pointing me towards some materials that could be helpful!
Oh! And if you ever feel like blogging about it, I’d love to know more about how you implement tx in the classroom. My special education district is starting to push more classroom based tx, which I already do with some kiddos. But I always feel like those sessions aren’t nearly as productive as the ones held in the therapy room. Do you have any helpful hints or advice?
I got to work this morning hating what I had planned for students in my Life Skills classrooms. I am so glad I saw your blog! The stars aligned and everything fell into place. The school library had In the Tall Tall Grass. Boardmaker Share had a sentence strip and pics all ready for me. Add a quick Youtube video with actual insects and an hour later we were rolling with it. The students LOVED it! Thank you thank you thank you! Now if only my principal had done her observation during this time….
I love this! I just went in to my Boardmaker, found this activity, edited the drawings with photos and printed copies for my students! I can’t way to do this activity after spring break!!
Yay! I hope they love it!
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