November 2022 - "Bake it Happen" Baking Theme

by Amy Curley June 24, 2023

TPT Seller of the Month

Our "Bake it Happen" TPT Seller of the Month was Sonia @talkingabouttalking_slp! We loved the baking-themed book companion for 'Jalapeno Bagels' that she shared with us! If you missed it, click the image below to grab your own book companion!

Baking Scene Dry Erase Board + Themed Communication Board

There are very few things as motivational as... food! If you've ever been brave enough to cook with your students, then you have certainly witnessed the excitement and LANGUAGE that comes with it!

Even in a play scenario kids love to "cook"! This picture scene is a great addition to the kitchen center in your PreK classrooms, or as part of your themed lesson. Pairing this with the recipe cards included in this month's Cube makes a well rounded lesson!

Use the recipe cards + mini objects or print outs of different ingredients to:

"add to" the bowl in the picture and show the actions of stirring or rolling
sort items that need to go into the refrigerator
sort items that are cold (refrigerator) or hot (oven)

I particularly like to use these open-ended scenes with mixed groups because you can focus on vocabulary building in context, sentence formulation, asking/answering questions, problem solving, inferencing, articulation, and more! Picture scenes are also a great material to use during assessments to gather a language sample!

Play Mixer

This toy is a PERFECT addition to any cooking/baking themed lesson! Add any mini objects or print outs of food and you can pretend to cook up any recipe! Kids always think it's fun and exciting to add whatever they want to the bowl. Be silly -- add a peanut butter to your spaghetti! It's a great opportunity to engage your students about their opinions!

One of my favorite Super Simple Songs on YouTube is "Do You Like Broccoli Ice Cream?" There's several versions and they are all just as silly. Built into the songs, it gives an opportunity for the kids to answer yes or no. Pair it with this mixer toy by adding the ingredients to the bowl. Take the conversation a step further and ask them to explain why! Think of as many ways to say "that's gross" as you can. So fun!

(4) Visual Recipe Cards

I am loving these visual recipe cards from Kristine @live.love.speech! Not only are they durable, they also show life-like visual of the ingredients. They are great for actual cooking or play! Following a recipe is a great way to target skills like: labeling items and actions and sequencing.

Stir, Crack, Whisk, Bake Book

Stir, Crack, Whisk, Bake is such a cute book to add to your cooking themed lessons! It is an interactive book, which makes it great to read in a small group or with individual students, but easily adaptable to a large group! Follow this book up with a cupcake making craft and it'll be a big hit! The speech and language skills with this book are truly endless. Target vocabulary, sentence building, following directions, or basic concepts. This book is easily adaptable to your AAC users, too. Use the communication board (on the back of this month's baking picture scene) as a low-tech core board with your AAC users.

Baker/Chef Sequencing Set

This month's @thesparkinnovations Sequencing Cards set is titled "Chef" and is a 4-scene story about a chef making spaghetti -- a fan favorite of so many kids!

I like to use these sequencing sets paired with sentence strips to target sentence formulation. They are also great tools to target using multiple sentences, sequencing + sequencing vocabulary, receptive and expressive vocabulary, and more!

These sets have been such a useful addition to my assessment toolkit as well. They're great for taking language or speech samples, or informally probing narrative language skills, WH questions, and vocabulary.

Texture Descriptors Visual Support

This month's visual support is a descriptor sentence strip. Pair this with all your cooking lessons from this month's Cube! It'll be a perfect support to any grab-n-go activity that you have -- playdoh, sensory bins, food (at lunch or snack), plugging into art class, etc. Grab a set for yourself by clicking the image above!