"Horton Hears a Who" Speech and Language Therapy Ideas

​Using books as a jumping point for language activities is vital to good speech and language therapy.  Here are some ways to encourage kids to engage with literature.

Activities for young children:

1)  "read" the book (look at pictures, read some of your favorite rhyming parts, talk about emotions), I rarely read all of the words in long Dr. Seuss books with young kids, but that doesn't mean we don't interact with the pages and learn about the story.

2) have your child point out different animals or actions they see on the pages, then act them out together. 

For example:
Horton is an elephant:  Stomp around the room like a big elephant.  Touch your ears and listen really hard like you have big elephant ears.
Kangaroos:  Jump...what are we going to do?  Jump!  what are we doing?  Jumping!
Monkeys: wave their arms, Eagles: fly,  Whos:  bang on drums, toot trumpets, etc.

*This is a great way to practice action words and verb tenses and complete sentences.  Also anything that gets little kids moving AND reading books is a win-win!

3) use the idea of the Whos talking so quietly and then making music to be loud and arttact attention to work on describer words and comparatives.  Make/use some kidsinstruments and practice loud/soft, fast/slow

For example:
I had some shakers and a little xylophone set, we practiced playing along with picture cue cards, I cued for "we are playing loud!"  let's play softer...ok, now you want to play...Louder!  This also extended into drumming on the table and walking around the house (slowly, quickly, softly, loudly)

4) visit seussville.com for an awesome colorsheet of Horton

Activities for Older Children

1) read through the book together, point out the different emotions Horton feels (confused, surprised, overwhelmed, hopeless, worried, etc.).  There are tons of other great things you can point out as well, go with what your child seems interested in.

2) create Venn Diagrams for Horton vs. the Whos or Horton vs. Kangaroo (that is the map that has two big empty circles that overlap in the middle).  After the map is complete you can talk more about how the two are similar and how they are different.  Maybe follow-up with some what-if questions...what if Horton had ears like the kangaroo? etc.

3) visit seussville.com for activity sheets about helping others and doing good deeds (they have a nice writing activity where you write a note to Horton telling him about a good deed you have done).

4) visit seussville.com and check out the activity where your child thinks of animals in the Jungle of Nool (or any jungle) and then you ask questions trying to guess which one they are thinking of (ex. does it fly?  does it have a long trunk?  does it have fur?)

5) extend activity #4 into a simile and metaphor discussion:  what if I said someone was as "sour as a kangaroo?"  as "helpful as Horton", as brave as a lion, felt small as a Who...wolfed down their meal, a busy bee.

6) extend activity #5 into a Describe It game...I am thinking of an animal that sounds like...looks like...eats... practice guessing and giving clues to help build semantic connections.

There is SO MUCH you can do with this book.  These games have been a huge hit with my clients.  Give them a try! 
I love Dr. Seuss because his books are a great jumping point for so many different language goals.   Enjoy Dr. Seuss Day :)

SEEL: early literacy resource for SLPs, teachers, and parentsI have been spending a lot of time preparing speech and language sessions centered on reading and writing development.  The best part about combining speech and language with literacy...they are so dependent on one another!

In one activity focusing on phonemic awareness I can also target articulation goals (final consonant deletion, voicing errors, minimal pairs, etc.) as well as getting language goals (plural /s/, pronouns, 3rd person singular /s/, verb tenses) ANDtransfer the principles to comprehension strategies and prediction as I expose children to text!

And the best part...you don't even have to plan for that kind of carryover!  It will just happen as you use books and target early literacy skills.

Here is my new favorite website for teaching early literacy skills: http://education.byu.edu/seel/

The website is for the SEEL (Systematic and Engaging Early Literacy) program.  This website lists hundreds of activities for increasing literacy skills through phonemic awareness tasks like rhymes and alliteration.  Plus they add new activities frequently.

Best part:  It is totally free.  I am a huge fan of helping kids and not having to spend money for specialized programs.  Thank you BYU and thank you SEEL program.

My personal favorite page of the website is under the Lesson Plan Library: Scopes and Sequences tab.  Here you can find developmental sequences associated with early literacy.  The steps are broken down into very user friendly chunks.  Plus they have linked the steps with appropriate activities, you want to teach first developing letters?  Click on any of: M, B, T, S, O and X

*notice that the letters are not sequenced alphabetically, that is not the easiest way for kids to learn their letters!  I LOVE that they don't take the "letter of the week" approach.  (which is ok, don't freak out if that is what your pre-school is using, your kids will still learn...but evidence suggests there are better ways)

One word of advice though:  even when I have taken extra time to make sure I am hitting multiple goals with one activity I still try to focus my cueing and prompting on my top priority goals.  It is easy for kids to get overwhelmed if you slam them with too much.  So be sensitive to what you want the child to work on and for everything else offer as much support as the child needs to be successful.

Check the program out.  You will love it.