Zoo Animal week in speech therapy was WILD! (Yes, I know that was the easy and obvious joke.) It was fun and very engaging for the kids…which is when the best language comes out! Here’s what we did this past week!
Zoo Books for Speech Therapy
If Anything Ever Goes Wrong at the Zoo
I love this book! (I know, I know…you’ve heard this one before!) This book is great and you need to add it to your collection. Why? It gets the kids talking! It’s the story of a little girl who asks an animal keeper each Saturday if she can keep an animal. Of course, she is told “no” each time. Leslie (the little girl) provides a reason why she can keep each animal… she has plenty of bananas for the monkeys. But she reminds the zoo keepers that “if anything ever goes wrong at the zoo” they can bring the animals to her house.
Of course, they end up bringing the zoo to her when it floods! I usually end the book reading with the question “What animal could you keep at your house?” One year, I even had the kids write a letter to a zookeeper giving reasons why they could keep an animal at their house. I found someone who knew a zookeeper and agreed to let the kids write them letters. I also wrote a letter, telling what book we read and why the kids were writing letters. BIG HIT with the kids!
Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do You Hear?
How could you do a zoo theme and not use this book? While the book above was used for my older clients (1st grade and up), this book was used with my preschoolers and kindergarteners. You can work on naming animals, imitating animal sounds and answering/asking “what” questions…all possible targets for kiddos that age!
Like those books with textures for your little bitty clients? Here’s another one for you! Keep the little clients engaged and interacting with this book. See here why I love this books!
Speech and Language Activities
Wild About Artic! Speech Therapy Materials
Who’s in the Zoo? An Interactive and Adaptive Book
Sensory Bin
I literally threw this together just as I was about to walk out the door one morning. Found these small plastic animals at Michael’s and they fit perfectly in my small sensory box. The beans were added and DONE! Or you could add some shredded green paper (as grass) or sand, but I did not have that on hand.
Craft
I loved the crafts for this week! I am only sharing one of them at this time and this zebra ended up so adorable! We used a paper plate for the face. The kids glued on stripes, ears, hair, nose, and eyes. For the artic clients, I wrote their target words on each stripe. I used a white crayon so that you could see the words. This craft also helped my vocabulary kids because many could not name a zebra.
You can check out some of my other animal themes such as ocean animals.
