I love to hear how people are using materials I created, so when Carly shared with me how she was using my packet for There Was A Cold Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow, I asked her to please share with you guys as a guest post! She paired some amazing activities with this book! So many of you have purchased this from my TPT store, so check out her great ideas for implementation and a couple of freebies 🙂 Thanks Carly!
Jenn was so nice to offer me to do a guest blog for you today! I do not have a blog myself so this is brand new to me. To start, I would like to tell you a little bit about myself. I am fresh out of grad school and completing my CFY. I am currently working for two school districts in rural Nebraska. That means I am on the road a lot and I see students birth to 21. Since I travel so much I need simple materials that can be used for all ages and disabilities.
When I saw Jenn’s packet for “There was a Cold Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow” I knew I could use it. I wanted to share how I have expanded the packet and the book for lesson plans for several days. Also I want to encourage you all to be creative with the packets you have purchased. These ideas are appropriate for preschool through 6th grade although I did use some activities with my middle school and high school groups.
Here are some of the things I go over with my students as I read the book:
- Review vocabulary you come across. The book has many words that could be discussed (coal, pipe, brimmed-hat, gulp, gobble).
- Discuss the parts of the book (Cover, Author, Illustrator, Dedication Page, Title Page, etc.)
- Some figurative language. When then Cold Lady figures out a plan she has a light bulb above her head.
- Encourage the students to fill in the blank as you read the story use the pictures as visuals for students as needed. (e.g. I don’t know why she swallowed some ______).
- Inferencing/Predicting: Why would she swallow some coal, scarf, etc. What will happen at the end after she eats all of the items? Who did she get the hat from? How do you know?
- Science: Simple to complex: What animals do you see? What does snow feel like? What happens if snow warms up? Do you know what causes us to hiccup? What muscle makes us hiccup?
I used the packet to work on sequencing, sequencing words, story retell and a variety of other skills. I want to share with you how I expanded the packet since I wanted to used the book all week long for both my language students and articulation students
I brought in manipulatives for the younger kids to make their own snowman. I used white and black pompoms for snow and coal, fleece or felt for snowman shape, foam hat, real sticks, and I made a pipe out of pipecleaners but a bubble pipe would also work well. In order to get the materials I had students ask (verbal, sign, or AAC) and encouraged expanding utterances. My students loved building a snowman in the speech room!
For my language students, I used the noun and verb sort activity, but I also used the words for building sentences. Each child drew a noun and a verb and had to say a sentence using the words.
For my articulation students I encouraged them to write down any words they heard with their sounds on the blank snowballs included in the packet. They practiced the words in the speech room and I also sent the pages home for home work.
Another activity I did with my articulation students is another building a snowman activity. I cut materials out of construction paper. For the activity I had the students practice their sounds and draw a card to see what piece they would get. They tried to see who could complete their snowman first. Craft, articulation practice and game all in one!
I have some students that have low phonological awareness and so I made some rhyming word cards that include words from the book and some that I thought of myself. For this activity I would name two words and have my students decide if they rhymed. If they did they could throw a “snowball” at me. We used large white pompoms which would not hurt. This is another favorite activity of my students.
Jenn includes a mini book into this great packet but for my older students with writing goals I encouraged them to write their own version of “There was an old lady”. My students were pretty creative even if the stories didn’t always make sense. For the prewriting process you can use snowman shapes; the head as the beginning of the story, medium snowball for the middle and bottom as the end of the story.
Another thing I wanted to have for my lesson was homework to bring extra practice and reinforcement home. I wrote a letter to parents/guardians letting them know what we are working on this week in speech. For my language students I sent copies of the vocabulary pictures home to work on retell vocabulary review and sequencing practice. As I mentioned earlier the articulation students brought the snowballs with their words as homework.
FREEBIES!
Now for a few extras for my fellow readers! I am including a template of my letter home to parents. I have an articulation letter and a language letter. I am also including the simple articulation word list I complied from the book. Finally, I am including the rhyming cards as well. These downloads are nothing fancy but I hope you can use them!
Parent Letter
Articulation Word List
Rhyming Cards
If you want to check out my packet, please visit my TPT store!
Don't forget to leave Carly some love in comments for sharing!
ShannanW says
Awesome post Carly! I love the way you expanded Jenn’s pack and made it meet the needs of all of your students. Lovin’ the Rhyming words and throwing a snowball idea. So cute! May need to steal – my little ones would LOVE that! Thanks for the ideas and freebies:)
whitney says
Great ideas Carly! I love hearing about how people expand on these books; I have all of the Old Lady books and this is already giving me ideas for the others! I too am working on my CFY in Nebraska! Small world! What school districts are you at? I’m at West Point Public Schools.
Old School Speech says
Very practical ideas!