5 Best-Ever Thanksgiving Books for Preschool Speech Therapy

 

Thanksgiving books for preschool speech therapy are a huge part of my no-stress turkey week plan.

Story-book reading strategies to maximize speech and language opportunities:

• Be expressive and use different voices as you read to engage the children.

• Read the book multiple times over several sessions. Focus on different story elements each time. This increases understanding of vocabulary and content, helps boost story-retelling skills and allows you to hit numerous different targets with just one activity. 

• Stop often during your reading to point out things in the pictures or text and discuss. 

• Comment and ask open-ended questions to get the most language from children. Don’t rely mainly on yes-no or What is it? questions. “Is he “scared?” will get you a one-word response. “Tell me about this picture.” or “I wonder what he’s thinking about?” will get you longer, more complex sentences. 
• Connect new vocabulary to pre-existing knowledge A badger is a forest animal. What other animals live in the forest? Who do you think is bigger, a fox or a badger?

• Be silly and “get it wrong” sometimes so the children can correct you. My preschoolers love that, and we get lots of giggles. 

• Follow up each reading with hands-on or movement activities. For Thanksgiving, you can talk about dinner food and relatives or name and describe farm animals: Show me how a turkey waddles. How does a horse move? How are they the same? Different? Does a sheep say moo? What do you think they eat? (You’ll probably get some interesting responses from your littles with that one). 

5 favorite picture books for the week before Thanksgiving

Turkey Trouble by Wendy Silvano 

Turkey is trying to hide before Thanksgiving by disguising himself. Plenty of farm animals and plenty of /k/ and /g/ practice (gobble, turkey)  

Bear Gives Thanks by Karma Wilson 

I love the rhyming text and forest animal vocabulary such as hare, lair and badger. Lots to talk about!

Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilky

A Plump and Perky Turkey by Teresa Bateman

There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Turkey by Lucille Colandro

Try some hands-on activities after reading your favorite Thanksgiving picture book

Play with a farm set to boost language skills in speech therapy.

 

Build-a-Turkey Thanksgiving speech therapy game

Follow up with songs and fingerplays. This post has you covered with plenty of suggestions: 

14 Songs and Fingerplays for Fall in Preschool Speech Therapy. 

Ready for some simple print and go activities to cover your entire PK and elementary caseload?

These are my favorite 3 activities for turkey week, after the storybooks of course! Click the links to see more about them.

Thanksgiving Bingo Riddles Game

Thanksgiving Bingo Riddles has 30 boards, so it’s terrific for doing small or large groups, plus a digital Google slides version is included! In those activity-filled days leading up to the holiday. There are lots of ways to target your goals with this one activity. It’s awesome for doubling up groups and getting in some make-up therapy too.

Go no-prep with this versatile Thanksgiving pack:

Try these open-ended activities with quick lists for an easy-breezy turkey week!

No Prep Thanksgiving Speech Therapy Mixed Group Magic. This no-prep pack is stuffed full of a huge selection of open-ended, print and go Thanksgiving activities. Also included are Thanksgiving-themed yes-no and WH question quick lists. What are Quick lists? Click to go check ’em out!

Finally, while this set does require some prep, it’s always a huge hit with my littles!

Five Little Turkeys Thanksgiving Activities.

Five Little Turkeys Thanksgiving Speech Therapy Activities.
I use the printed interactive book one day, then show on the smartboard or tablet the next session.  There are plenty of activities to last you a week or more with your wiggly preschoolers.

I hope you love this round-up of Thanksgiving books for preschool speech therapy.

For more Thanksgiving speech therapy ideas, visit this Pinterest Board: Thanksgiving Speech Therapy Activities. 

I am thankful this week

 For family and friends. It’s been a special week for my family with the birth of my first grandchild! 

 I’m also so grateful and humbled to have been blessed with the opportunity to share my passion for helping children build their communication skills with you, my friends. And to help SLPs and parents make our crazy life a little less stressed, and a little more joyful.