As an SLP who does LOTS of work on literacy and language, I live for character sets of books. Some of my favorite characters are The Berenstain Bears. Below, I detail why I use The Berenstain Bears in Speech Therapy.
The Berenstain Bear books have been around for many years. At this point, there are tons of Berenstain books on every topic you could possibly think of. They are perfect for teaching social skills or those “teachable moments” that come up both at school and home. I use them to teach all kinds of life lessons, such as doing homework, telling the truth, being a good sport, and many more. They are also wonderful for teaching holiday vocabulary and go great with Story Grammar Marker lessons. I use them for targeting comprehension, sequencing, story grammar, social skills, and much more.
There are several school-related Berenstain Bear books that I use throughout the school year. I included an Amazon affiliate link to The Berenstein Bears Go To School below. These books have great pictures, awesome vocabulary, and wonderful lessons at the end. For the little ones, I just simplify the text down to their level. There are also great activities that go along with the characters on the Berenstain Bears website. In addition, there are Berenstain Bears activities on the PBS page as well. You can print out a full list of all Berenstain Bear books from the official Berenstain Bears site. As teachable moments surface during the year (a student tells a fib, someone is bullied, homework starts slacking, etc., I pull out the coinciding book and we see what lesson the cubs (or the parents) learned on the topic! This strategy also works great at home with your own kiddos, too!
