This is another great activity for fall! This silly book tells the story of an old lady who swallows a bunch of things, and at the end she makes a scarecrow with all of the items she swallowed. I made this Old Lady board my first year working, and have used it every year since (several times per year, too!). Although it took some time to make, it was worth the effort because I’ve used it SO many times.

She actually makes an appearance every season- “There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow,” …a Rose, …a Shell…and more! I do this activity with my preschool classes and with my elementary moderate severe classes. Here’s how I use this book in speech therapy:

I read the book to the group, and as we come across each new item in the story, I pause the book and the kids take turns using the visuals to make the sentence, “She swallowed ____” ( or “ate” if that’s easier for your kids).

I use this as an opportunity to target basic WH- questions (e.g., “What did she swallow?”) and see if the student can select the appropriate icon. For kids who might need a smaller field, I’ll take 2 or 3 icons and attach to the felt board, and they can choose from there, like this:

After they make the sentence using the visuals, we practice making requests to “feed” the old lady the real item! Most of these “real” items were found at the dollar store or they were items I already had at home or in my speech room. To modify for higher language kids: ask them WH- questions about the items (“where do you wear pants? where can you find leaves? what can you use a rope for?” etc.) or have them sequence the story (“first, she swallowed leaves, then, she swallowed the shirt,” etc.). To modify for lower language kids, have them identify the items from a field of 2 or 3 (“find the pumpkin!” while holding up the pumpkin and another item), or target yes/no questions by asking “is this a pumpkin? YES! It’s a pumpkin!” or “NO! That’s not a pumpkin! It’s a leaf!”

You can tell by her wrinkles that my Old Lady has had a lot of love over the years! 😉

To incorporate some core words for my nonverbal kids, I attached “put” and “in” to 2 talking bricks, so they could say “put in” when they “fed” the old lady. For my students who use devices, they said “put in” with their devices.

The kids always get excited when they see me walk in with this Old Lady. Recently, one of my preschoolers said with so much enthusiasm, “We feed the Old Lady!” when I came into the room carrying her- it was super cute! Thanks for reading. 🙂

 

-Amanda, The SLP Girl