I decided to do a vehicle theme for therapy with many of my preschool and kindergarten groups; as well as, some of my older students with different communication needs. You can also do this in your classroom during circle time or centers. I created this I Spy Vehicle book with a follow up identification board activity for the first week of this theme.
The book is easy to set up. After you laminate all the pages just put a piece of hard Velcro in all four squares on every page. Put soft Velcro on the back of each vehicle picture. There are 3 different vehicles to place on each page and it shows in the directions which vehicles go on each page. Each page gives a clue about a vehicle and the student has to select the correct vehicle to match the description given a choice of 3 vehicles. For example: “I spy with my little eyes a vehicle that moves dirt.”
The student then chooses from the school bus, ambulance, and bull dozer to match the description – “a construction vehicle that moves dirt”. The student moves the bulldozer picture to the top box to complete the clue.
You can change your level of cueing depending on the student’s level. Sometimes I might narrow the visual field to 2 choices, provide a color clue, or even give the name of the vehicle along with the clue depending on my student’s skill level. For example, “I spy a vehicle that drives on tracks.” I might just hold up the garbage truck and train picture to narrow the visual field. For some of my student I make the sound the train makes “chugga-chugga choo choo” or add the clue “a blue vehicle that drives on tracks.”
After we finish reading the book I had the students complete the Vehicle Identification board to work on following directions. The worksheet has a picture of all 12 vehicles which were targeted in the book. There are several different ways you can set up this activity to work on following directions. Usually I have the students find the number 1 and then we point to each vehicle on the first line as we name them – “cement truck, school bus, tractor”. Then I give the first instruction such as “find the school bus and color it yellow.” You can have the students color the pictures in the order they appear on each line or you can mix up the order depending on the student’s level. After we finish the first row we continue on to the second row.
For some of my higher and more verbal students I have the students give the directions to each other so the student gets to pick which vehicle to find and what color to color that vehicle. They love to be in charge!!!! Plus it keeps them engaged in the activity. For my students with communication books, boards, or devices I would let him or her select what color to color a particular vehicle by using their AAC system to tell his/her peers the color to use.
Many of my students are still working on their coloring skills but I think they turned out really great!!!!
Check out the next speech blog to see what else we do for our vehicle theme!
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I really like this idea, Sarah! We wrapped up on vehicle unit around the same time and I would love to incorporate this activity for next year. Is there a link to a TpT page that I am missing to purchase it? 5 more days 🙂
I added the link to the book. Enjoy!