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using The Crunching Munching Caterpillar in speech therapy
Frequent Speech Sounds:

/fl/ initial
/k/ initial
/l/ medial
/er/ medial and final
/sh/ final (wish)

Themes:

spring
bugs

Book Details:
Diverse Characters: N/A
Age Recommendation: Early Childhood, Elementary

The Crunching, Munching Caterpillar

By Sheridan Cain

Caterpillar wants to do more than just munch his way through the blackberry bush–he wants to fly like Butterfly, Bumblebee, and Sparrow, and after a long dreamy nap, he finds that now he really can!

This sweet spring and bugs book can be used in speech therapy to address social/emotional issues like being told you can’t do something. It is also great for predicting and for targeting figurative language as well as for mental state verbs and a variety of sounds including: /k/, /er/, /l/, fl/ and /sh/! Discover more of the speech and language teaching concepts for using The Crunching, Munching Caterpillar in speech therapy below:

Key Teaching Concepts

Narrative Structure:

action sequence

Narrative Concepts:

vocabulary
sequencing
figurative language
social/emotional
predicting
verbs (regular past tense)
verbs (present progressive)
verbs (mental state)
text features

Sequencing:

order of events that leads to caterpillar turning into a butterfly

Vocabulary:

caterpillar, bumblebee, crunch, munch, twittering, swoop, soar, sparrow, dandelion, graceful, stiff

Social/Emotional:

Caterpillar dreams and wishes to fly even when he is told he can’t.

How does Caterpillar feel when he keeps being told he can’t fly?
How does Caterpillar feel after he talks to Butterfly?

Figurative Language:

onomatopoeias
similes (as light as dandelion fluff and a feather)

Grammar:

verbs (regular past tense)
verbs (present progressive)
verbs (mental state)

Text Features:

moving text
change in text size
change in font
dialogue

Predicting:

What do you think will happen when he tries to eat his breakfast?
What do you think will happen when he tries to go to sleep?
What do you think he will dream about?
What do you think will happen when he keeps stretching?