Barn Dance! Language through Literacy

Whew! This is quite a time of year for the speech therapist. In our district we have December 1st deadlines to get children counted towards our teacher units. There is always a great deal of testing to be done in October and November for us, as I'm sure there is for everyone else as well.

So, what did I do before leaving for the break? I'm so glad you want to know.

I used Barn Dance! by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault (Authors) and Ted Rand (Illustrator) with my language groups. Most teachers are familiar with Bill Martin Jr. from his work with Eric Carle. This book is more complex in its story, but has a beautiful rhythm for which Mr. Martin seems to be known.

I have criteria for choosing my literature to use with my language groups. I usually try to make sure that my literature is entertaining, has clear characters, that comprehension questions can be asked, and that the story can be retold. (I may have to do another post on all my criteria, but this hits the high points.) It doesn't mean that by not meeting the criteria a book is bad; it just means that I want specific skills addressed when working with my language impaired children, and I look for literature that supports those skills. 

This book was entertaining. It is about a boy who sneaks out of his house in the middle of the night to witness a hoedown hosted by the scarecrow in the barn. The boy and the scarecrow are clear characters but most of the other characters are only mentioned once. The specifics of this story might be hard to retell though the overall events could be retold fairly easily. I mainly chose this book because of the cadence, the fun illustrations, the ability to lead into other activities, and the feeling it evoked. To me, this book is best paired with some other activities.

During the story we identified animals, any unfamiliar vocabulary, identified actions words, and of course, worked on our rhyming. 

With my lower groups I pulled out the ever faithful Fisher-Price Farm. This farm is something I purchased very early on in my speech therapy career and has been invaluable throughout the career. Anyway, after reading the book and identifying animals throughout and talking about what they were doing, I used the fisher price farm animals. I gave the children some directions with the animals. (Put the cow in the hayloft, put the horse in the stable, etc.) For some reason, my kids always need a whole lot of work with directions and the more complex prepositions. My lower functioning kids love to make the animal noises. My barn has the sounds so sometimes we discuss whether the sounds match the animal I have put in place to trigger the sounds. 

We closed by doing our own mini square dance. I downloaded Turkey in the Straw.  Before listening to the song we discussed that the animals in the book danced to music. I told them that there was a type of dancing called square dancing and we were going to try. We made a circle, I called out simple directions (circle left, stop, circle right, stop, in, out, stop, hands down, clap in rhythm, stop, march, etc.)  We practiced all of these directions. Then I put on the music, The kids loved it. Because this can get out of hand quickly, I set the volume low and gave instructions in a soft tone of voice.  

I wanted to make a scarecrow craft incorporating listening and directions, but I ran out of time. I will have to do that next year. I have also heard of other people making haystack snacks to accompany this book. I will have to try that next time.

The kids enjoyed this activity as much as I did. I love to incorporate movement into my therapy as much as I can. 

I have included a link to my rhyming freebie here. I hope you enjoy this and it sparked some ideas for you. 

This post does include amazon affiliate links.