All Aboard the Polar Express!

Long, long ago (read: 2000) in a land far, far away (read: New England) my husband and I were on a downtown adventure to the new Border's bookstore (read: now out of business) when we saw a large crowd. We shoved our way through the people to see what the hullabaloo was.

It turns out that a children's author/illustrator was in the store signing books. I only recognized one of his books, so I grabbed it and stood in line. One person after me the line was stopped (she had to hold a sign saying, "I am the end of the line."!!) and we waited for our signature.

Little did I know that the author, Chris Van Allsburg, would become one of my favorite authors of all time! The book that I had signed, Polar Express, became a favorite of my future children. I now quite a few of his amazing books and use The Stranger every fall for speech therapy activities with my older students.

Around the time that my son turned two, he became obsessed with trains. Obsessed. It was all about Thomas, Toby, Duncan, etc. We bought him a train table and shelled out obnoxious amounts of money on those wooden trains. And, I admit, I loved it. I loved his adorable chubby face yelling "Choo choo!!!!!" and he zoomed the little blue wooden train around the tracks.

 

The Flash's 2 year old bday invite

Not surprisingly, he also was delighted by the movie Polar Express. Which I was not. The animation and scary hobo character creep me out. When we flew to my parents' home for Christmas and she bought the movie, I forbade her from letting The Flash bring it home with us.  I said it was "a special treat for grandma's house".

Alas, my son no longer plays with his trains. But I just couldn't get rid of them. They are (no joke) the only toy(s) that I have kept from toddler days. Maybe one day I can pass them onto his children. And I hope they adore them...because they will be the only toys I will have saved for all those years!

To bring back the memories of the train-days, I created a bunch of Speech/Language Activities that can be used with elementary-aged students. Why use Literature in Speech therapy? Check out my post here.

The regular and irregular plurals are inspired by the book and free. Just click on "download preview" from my TpT site for the set!

If you love it and want a huge download of activities to use for Speech/Language therapy, consider buying the entire set:

Let me walk you through this unit:

  

19 Level 2 vocabulary/definitions pairs (approx. grades 1-3) and 15 Level 3 vocabulary/definitions pairs (approx. grades 3+).  Use these for matching games (Go Fish, Memory) or just use the vocabulary words for pre-post data on vocabulary.

 

You can make copies of this vocabulary worksheet if you want to work on more than 4 words (I usually do). This worksheet can be completed in writing or orally and then brought home for a home connection.

8 Regular plural pairs and 8 irregular plural pairs from the story. These can be used for any matching game activities. These are free if you click on "Download Preview".

Regular Plurals worksheet and irregular plurals worksheet. These can be completed together orally or in written form. They contains picture supports for kids who are unable to read the words. These are free if you click on "Download Preview".

16 conjunctions and 16 clauses to create complex sentences. Put together one Tree and one Hot Chocolate and finish the sentence (e.g. "A train appeared outside while the boy looked out the window.").

39 /r/ words directly from the story. You can make duplicates of these cards for matching games, or leave as singletons to be practiced as words/sentences.

 39 /s, z/ words directly from the story.

 Describe the character worksheet. I have included a variety of adjectives to help give the students ideas, although you should feel free to begin this activity by brainstorming your own describing words.

 

Draw or describe what the similes in the book mean to work on descriptive and non-literal language. 

One page of pictures that can be cut out and used for story sequencing. I created these by retelling the story myself and included pictures that I would have liked to use (this explains why there are 2 of several pictures) to job my memory.

A story comprehension questions die. Cut it out and glue the blue tabs together. Roll the dice and answer the questions. One way to make this activity motivating is to write numbers 1-6 on each side of the die. Students can gain points for each roll. The "winner" is the one with the most points at the end of the session.

 A story map to complete in writing or orally. This is a great activity for children who can read/write because they need to carryover this skill into their classroom writing assignments.

 Use the Story Retelling Rubric to actually assign a score to the student's retelling skills. Use the rubric to measure progress over time.

Don't own the book? Well, you probably should! You should have plenty of time before the holidays to order it, or get it from the library. Another alternative is that you can read/listen to it being read online for free at storylineonline (just click "more stories" until you find it).

Get the entire Speech/Language unit here.

Enjoy! And always believe!  
(Which is quite hypocritical for me to say since we decided to tell our kids from day one that Santa was a fun myth but not to spoil other kids' fun.)


Check out other Speech/Language holiday-themed activities that I have created (click on the pictures to go the blog posts):