Go, Dog. Go

Go, Dog. Go

One of the very best ways to develop language is through reading stories, or what we in the biz call "narratives." All children can benefit from reading aloud, whether you are reading something simple like Go, Dog. Go or something much more complex like the Harry Potter series.  For early readers, especially children under 6 or so, Go, Dog. Go by PD Eastman (the same author as Are You My Mother) is one of my very favorite books. 

I find Go, Dog. Go to be one of the best "simple" books that both has a connected story, but can also be used for very specific tasks.  For example, the entire story is about the dogs all going to a big dog party in a tree, but there are several running themes throughout the book as well.  For example, the pink poodle and the yellow dog talk about their hats several times throughout the book.  These pages are fantastic for practicing greetings during a speech session.  Each time the poodle shows the yellow dog her hat, they both say, "Hello" and "Goodbye." The pages are full of prepositions and descriptions including color and size.  Additionally, the dogs are doing such fun kid-friendly activities like playing games, going to a party, stopping for birds crossing the street, and swimming that kids tend to keep attention much better than in other books on the same reading level.

While any reading is beneficial, reading to really help develop language is important.  In my practice, I do that in a variety of ways. One of those is thematic sessions in which the majority of the session revolves around the narrative, even though I work on different goals.  For example, let's pretend I'm working with a 3 year old boy with around 50 total words.  I might be working with him on following directions, greetings, attention, using expressive language, and also introducing some new vocabulary. How can I possibly do this with just one book? Well, I would use the book as a center of our activities.  We might work together on Go, Dog. Go for a month with several or all of the following activities:

• Use visuals and activities for big and little
• Great site for visuals that go with can be found here.
• Wear hats, put hats on, take hats off, etc.
• Count the dogs
• Match colors with trees or dogs
• Some good visuals can be found here.
• Color Go, Dog. Go coloring pages (for older kids we would follow specific directions like, "Color the dog's head purple." or "Draw stripes on the dog's feet"
• Coloring pages can be found here.
• Some of my favorite coloring visuals can be found here as well.
• Act out sleeping and awake
• Talk about fast and slow, play the game "Red light/Green light" during therapy
• Make crafts that associate with the book like a stoplight collage, gluing cotton balls to a poodle for hair, make cars out of cardboard boxes, etc.
• Practice "stop" and "go" with stop lights
• One blogger made adorable stop lights during an entire preschool Go, Dog. Go activity, find it here.
• Watch youtube videos of readings of Go, Dog. Go for homework to further familiarize the child with the story
• Two of my favorites can be found here and here.
• Give parents some dog activities to do for homework at home.
• Some great ones are found here and here.
• Make a sensory bin with Go, Dog. Go themed objects to find and discuss.

Also, I wanted to show some pictures for how I used some of the above resources recently.  I used them addressing several different goals, and my kid had a blast!  Although we've moved on to another book, the kiddo requests Go, Dog. Go almost every session.

After reading the book, we used a big and a little tupperware and then separated the big and little dogs into the appropriate container.  I've extended this activity with other visuals like planes, firetrucks, etc. essentially whatever will get the kid's attention.

We use these crayon visuals to have the kid request which color they want.  I've used this when matching colors to dogs or colors to trees in the book as well.  Additionally, with more advanced kids, I've used the visuals as a reminder of instructions (e.g., I would place a visual when the instruction was something like, draw pink polka dots or purple stripes).

Here is my sweet, sweet sensory box and visuals that I use.  We have several elements from the book including dogs, cars, hats, party blower/horn things, and balls of various colors (ever tried to find mini trees? Much harder than you'd think...) We use this box mostly for receptive language and trying to find specific elements.  We tested it out without the objects in the beans first to make sure that the kid could identify the elements.  After the initial test, we used the sensory box for an increased element of difficulty.  Sensory boxes are great for speech because they add a kinesthetic element that is hard to really get otherwise.  (Learn more at this great blog! or this one! or this one!) 

Hope this is helpful to you in your speech therapy journey.  Enjoy and Happy Speeching!

References

• All Go, Dog. Go images were taken from google images.  Additionally, the visuals I pictured were taken from the various references I posted above.