Sailboats, speedboats, and ships are fun to talk about during the summer…or at least I think so! My transportation unit is split into different modes for each week. I miss being in the schools because then I could have a water table for my little friends to float boats in. But we still have fun with it!
For starters, I use a few different books depending on my little friends’ attention level and age. For my older kids, we read “Busy Boats” by Tony Mitton. It’s a cute book that teaches the diffrerent types of watercrafts as well as simple vocabulary to basic parts. I’m always shocked when I have a kiddo who knows what a “ferry” is. Our second book has few words but lends itself to spontaneous (or structured language) situations. “Sail Away” by Donald Crews is great for preschoolers’ attention span and language needs! There’s very little text so it lends itself to discussions about the pictures without getting bogged down in the story. My last book was a book I made. It’s an interactive book with simple sentences and color words. Each page features a short sentence with a color word in it. The child has to find the matching boat and put it in the water.
Throughout the week, we had paint dot activities (like in the picture above) to complete while we drilled articulation targets. We also had language activities to work on grammar and sentence structure. All of these are in packets that I am currently working on to add to in the TpT shop.
Our articulation craft at the end of the week was a hit with the kids. Each child needs a popsicle stick, half a paper plate and a triangle cut from construction paper. I let the kids paint the bottom of their boat (the paper plate) but you could easily use crayons to cut down on mess. I made a set of pictures for each target I needed to address and cut those out. As we assembled the boat, we worked on our target words. Then it came time to glue the pictures on the sail. Each time the child said his target word correctly 5x, he glued it on the sail. Once completed, he had a take home activity to work on at home. In the picture below, my little friend was working on bilabials (p,b,m) in the initial position.
Hope everyone is enjoying the summer!
