Last week I shared how I created 3 different adapted books which all target prepositional concepts and I will be using one of the books each week in therapy.  The series includes – “Where is the Kitten?”, “Where is the Puppy?”, and “Where is the butterfly?”  For these adapted books, the student has to either place the animal in the given location or find the correct prepositional concept to match where the animal is in the book.

This week we are reading the adapted book “Where is the Puppy?” and playing a Puppy Prepositional Bingo game I created.

“Where is the Puppy?” targets the prepositional concepts “in”, “on”, “over”, “under”, “in front of”, “behind”, “next to”, and “between”.  The student has to select the correct preposition to identify “where” the puppy is in the picture.  Each preposition word is paired with the symbol to represent the prepositional concept.  The preposition icons are similar to the ones on core boards and AAC systems.

I set up the book activity similar to how I did last week for my other prepositional adapted book.  For my verbal students, I have them take turns pointing to the word boxes on each page and have them try reading/saying the words along with me.  Since the book is repetitive the students usually can help read/repeat some of the words, such as “where is the puppy?” and “woof, woof”.

Then we look at the picture and I wait to see if my student can use a prepositional phrase to describe where the puppy is such as “in the box”.

This book is a little more challenging and I often had to give my students a choice of 2 prepositions to help them identify where the puppy was located.  For example, on the page where the puppy is under the tree I asked “is the puppy under or in the tree?” as I pointed to or held up the two prepositional pictures.

I continue to model those prepositional concepts multiple times for each page and I have the student say the prepositional concept or find it on their device.

I created a simple Puppy Prepositional Bingo game to play after reading the book which I wanted to share as a free resource for you to use with your students.  The pictures on the bingo board are the same ones from the book.  The more practice the better!  I created 4 different Bingo boards…the pictures are the same just in different places.  There are different ways you can play this game depending on your students’ skill level.  First I give each of the students one of the Bingo boards.

If the student knows most of the prepositional concepts you can make it a little more challenging.  I might say “find in”.  I don’t say what the puppy is “in” yet because once they know the object like box they will just point to the picture with a box in it.  If the student can find or point to the 2 pictures which have the “in” preposition then I say the rest of the clue “in box”.  I give the student a chip to place on the “in the box” square.

For some of my students, I give the prepositional phrase in relationship to the object.  I would say “find puppy behind the blocks”.  The student would have the added support of the word “blocks”.  Again, they might just be finding the blocks picture and pointing to it because they see the blocks but that’s okay because then I point to the dog behind the blocks and model again “the puppy is behind the blocks”.  I have the student also say the preposition or prepositional phrase again for the practice.

For some of my students still learning those concepts I often have to show them the picture as I say the prepositional phrase.  I know a lot of this game is matching but I continue to model those prepositional phrases and the students can visually see the puppy and the relationship to the other object in the picture.  Prepositions are hard to teach so the more practice and modeling of those concepts the better.

If you are interested in a Free copy of the bingo game click the link – Puppy Preposition Bingo

You can find the series of preposition adapted books on TPT with the link – Where is the Animal?