Sing: Counting Snowmen with the Monkey Mitt

One of the tools I break out of my speech bag of tricks on a weekly basis is Melody House’s “Monkey Mitt.”  The mitt itself is a fuzzy glove, and you can buy sets of puppets to use with it.  The puppet sets come with a card that has fingerplays and activities on it.  

For January, we’ve been using Melody House’s cute snowman set with the Monkey Mitt.  My kids love putting the snowmen on the glove and taking them off as we count the snowmen, sing, and learn rhymes.  Here are some of our favorite snowman songs and activities:

5 Little Snowmen (sung to the tune of “10 Little Indians”)

One little, two little, three little snowmen,

Four little, five little, five little snowmen,

Playing in the snow are five little snowmen,

Oh! Here comes the sun!

Five little, four little, three little snowmen,

Two little, one little, no little snowmen,

Oh! Now there’s no little, no little snowmen,

They all melted in the sun!  

(My kiddos love this song.  We put the snowmen on the monkey mitt as we count up to five, and then take them off as we count down to zero.  We sing the second verse using our best sad voices as the snowmen melt!)

A favorite poem of ours is “Five Little Snowmen.”  The poem is included in the snowmen pack, but I found a sweet printable book for the poem by Cherry Carl on littlebooklane.com.  You can get your own copy here. 

We also sing songs with hand motions frequently during speech and language.  Hand motions help young children remember the words to songs and give children that have limited speech a way to interact during songs.  

Here’s one we enjoy with some easy hand motions:

Little Snowman (sung to the tune of “Freres Jaques)

Little snowman, little snowman (put your left hand out, and near the floor as if showing how high something is), 

Short and fat, short and fat (put both arms in front of you, rounding them as if to show the snowman has a big belly),

Carrot nose and coal eyes, carrot nose and coal eyes (put both hands to your nose and then to your eyes),

Black top hat, black top hat (put both hands over your head).

While singing fun songs, you’ll be working on counting, labeling (body parts and clothing), and giving descriptions!  

Have fun singing!!

Talking: Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!

So this winter I’ve had one thing on my mind: Snow! Snow! Snow! Living in sunny Southern California though, there’s no snow in sight. Yep, today it’ll be a balmy 80 degrees. We’re making do here in the speech room with “Let It Snow”!!!!! Also known as “Insta-Snow,” this stuff is pretty magical, especially if you are in a no snow area. 

A lot of my kiddos haven’t had the opportunity to experience real snow, so this is the next best thing. You add water to the fake snow crystals, fluff it up, and have cool, wet, powdery snow in an instant. I love throwing it in a small plastic bin for sensory activities and great discussions.

Here are just a few things we did with our snow:

We talked about our senses: We spread out our snow on a tray and put our hands in it and talked about how it felt (and also how it smelled, which was kind of like baby powder!).

We talked about prepositions, or where things were: We put small toys in the snow and talked about where they were (in the snow, on top of the snow, under the snow…). Here’s our animals in and on the snow:

We used good vocabulary: We hid common, everyday things in the snow to work on vocabulary. Here, we’re working on words that start with the letter “B.”

And we sprinkled it on each other, too, just for fun!!!

When you’re done playing with your snow, spread it out on a cookie sheet and let it dry. Put the dried snow back in a plastic bag and reuse it again another day!!

Have fun talking about snow!!

Read: About Snow

I LOVE the book Snowballs, by Lois Ehlert.

There are so many things you can talk about with your kiddos when you read it, and the illustrations are amazing. The author uses pictures of real objects (like seeds, and strawberries) to decorate her snowmen, so you can get LOTS of practice in naming things and learning new vocabulary. She even includes a list of all of the pictures of items in the book at the end- similar to the “I Spy” books.

Here’s what we talk about while we read the book:

Body parts: We look at all of the different objects used to make eyes, noses, mouths, arms, etc.

Counting: We count everything! The number of seeds used to make teeth, how many birds we see while we read, the number of snowmen, how many stones we see, you get the picture!

Prepositions, or where things are: we identify where different objects are on the snowmen. A few of my kids are working on the preposition “on,” which is perfect for this book (hats are on heads, eyes are on faces… yep. We love “on”!).

Vocabulary: Name everything! Talk about what you do with the objects in the pictures and where you usually find them. Take turns saying “I see _____” and naming an object on one of the pages while the other person/people find it.

You can easily make your own snowmen from objects around the house or in your classroom or speech room after reading the book. 2-3 paper plates work really well for the snowmen’s bodies. Lay them out on a table like this:

Add items to make the snowman’s face, arms, and accessories. Leftover Christmas candy snowman, anyone?

Or maybe an office supply snowman is more your style:

Have fun reading!