Spring Books for Listening and Spoken Language

Happy Spring! It’s almost April and the weather is finally starting to warm up. The change of seasons provides so many listening and spoken language opportunities! Reading is a key element of supporting our kiddos with hearing loss, so I’m sharing some favorite spring books and a few therapy ideas to go with them.

Little Blue Truck’s Springtime by Alice Schertle

This book is great for so many reasons but here’s a few highlights: it’s a flap book, it has rhyming, and it has animal sounds. As the little blue truck drives down the road, it picks up different animal friends.

Learning to Listen Sounds: Many of the animals are hidden behind the flaps, making it well suited to an auditory first approach. For children working on learning to listen sounds, getting to pull down the flap is great motivation to imitate.

Verbs: Includes swimming, munching, nestled, sing, leap, shout. I love these for expanding vocabulary beyond the basic eat, sit, etc.

Rhyming and Phonemic Awareness: The rhymes at the end of the line are super engaging, as well as great for working on phonemic awareness skills.

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The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle

This book is a classic for a reason! Here’s some ideas to target audition goals:

Following Directions: Print out a caterpillar and get some play food (doesn’t even need to match the book). Practice following directions: the caterpillar eats the strawberry, then the orange, then the pie.

Plurals: With your caterpillar, food pictures/play food, and a die, practice plurals! Make it a game by rolling the die and take turns modeling plurals for your students. The caterpillar ate 4 pears! The caterpillar ate 5 muffins!

Descriptions: Open the book in front of you so you can see all the fruit or all the other food the caterpillar ate. Practice giving directions with descriptions only: the caterpillar are something that’s cold (ice cream). The caterpillar ate something sticky (lollipop). Start with harder clues and give easier ones after.

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Are You Ready to Play Outside? By Mo Willems

This is not exclusively a spring book, but it is about playing outside in the rain. As with all Elephant & Piggie books, the kids love it. These books are excellent for turn taking. I also give the characters different voices, which is nice auditory practice for suprasegmentals.

Action verbs: The book is full of verbs and things to do in the rain, but you can pair them with action verb cards and work on sentences. Pull cards out of an envelope to see what Elephant and Piggie will do next! “Elephant crawls in the rain!”

Bonus points if you get a squirt bottle, laminate pictures of Elephant and Piggie, and have them act out the different action verbs “in the rain.”

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Pete the Cat Five Little Ducks by James Dean

This book follows the song Five Little Ducks. Pete the Cat starts with 5 ducks, and as they do different activities (swimming, jumping, swinging, playing), he loses a duck each time. It rhymes and you can sing it or read it.

Phonemic Awareness: Lots of rhyming words allow for great phonemic awareness practice. You can expand on these rhyming words into a whole lesson on rhyming.

One vs. all: This book lends itself well to teaching about “just one” duck at the end, and then they all come back. You can easily act this out with rubber duckies or pictures of ducks.

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Bear Wants More by Jane Chapman.

This was my first Bear book (the whole series is awesome). I randomly grabbed it from a preschool library and I immediantly bought myself a copy from Thriftbooks. This book repeats the line “Bear wants more!” throughout the book, so it’s fun for the kids to complete the sentence and pretend to read.

Sequencing: I prefer this book for sequencing because it is a manageable amount of things to remember and sequence. There is also a logic to the sequence, as he keeps eating more because he is still hungry.

Auditory Memory: This book can quickly be turned into an auditory memory game. There is a memory game that goes: I went to the store and bought an apple. Then the second person has to say: I went to the store and bought an apple and a banana. And it goes on and on for as long as you can remember the list. You could easily play a version with a bear: The bear was hungry so he ate a fish, berries, cookies, and on and on.

Phonemic Awareness: You might be noticing a pattern. I really like rhyming books!

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Vocabulary Books:

Before I do any spring theme activities, I like to introduce some of the spring vocabulary with a book. I’ve been pairing these books with my Spring Listening Printables because they use many of the same bugs and animals.

Count, Rhyme, Touch, and Feel in the Garden is a rhyming touch and feel book, which is always nice for engaging little ones. It counts backwards from 5 and each page has a different garden animal or bug. This baby or toddler book has bright pictures and is a nice way to introduce basic spring vocabulary. (PS: I linked Amazon because that’s all I could find but it was only $7 at in store at B&N).

Backyard Bugs by Jill McDonald

Backyard Bugs includes more bugs (10 as opposed to 5) and gives a fun fact about the bugs on each page, which gives it a little more information. I like to read this before doing any spring theme activities so I can spot holes in their vocabulary.

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Honorable Mention: How cute is this Baby Bunny Finger Puppet book?

I like to have a few fun, interactive books on hand to give the child for the last five minutes of my session so I can jot down my paperwork or chat with a parent or teacher. Puppet books like this are a fun little reward that encourage a love of books!

Are you looking for more listening practice? Join my email list to grab this free Spring Listening Walk freebie! Listening walks are a great way to practice listening, plus practice some spring vocabulary with a little scavenger hunt! It’s fun to do as a class, or to send home as a parent carry-over activity (reinforce all that vocabulary you just taught them with all those books!) If you’re already on my email list, this is already in your inbox ;)

I hope you enjoyed my list of spring books for listening and spoken language! I’d love to hear about your favorite spring books and activities!

-Deanna

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