The essential card deck for prepositions

Cute animals + Prepositions = Let’s target expressive and receptive language goals. I can say with 99.9% certainty that every child I have ever worked with who presents with language delays has difficulties either understanding or using prepositions. Prepositions are SO IMPORTANT. They help our kids understand ‘where’ so they don’t get lost in a classroom or are confused with what they have to do.  It took me 10 years, but I have finally made some Flash Cards and accompanying Playing Cards featuring said cute animals. There is nothing fancy about these, my resources aren’t fancy. They are simple, functional visuals so that YOU can get creative using them. The best part is that I have added a receptive and expressive language checklist so that you can do your progress monitoring as well.

Download from my TpT

Featuring 29 prepositions: in, on, off, over, under/below*, above, next to/beside*, inside, outside, in front, behind, into, towards/to*, across/along*, around, between, before, after, near, away, opposite, with, up and down.

*Where there are two similar concepts, both words are on the same Flash Cards.

GAME IDEAS I’m thinking Memory/Match, Go Fish, Snap or Bingo for the playing cards. They are already included as ‘doubles’ in the set so you don’t have to remember to print twice! I love using bowling pins, hide’n’seek and paper clips/rods for some fishing too! Now a lot of the times we have to really prepositions, and the ‘playing cards’ are for later. It is for this reason that I made flash cards with the words on them, so that you can use it as an explicit teaching moment. A lot of the times I will have my activities out such as blocks or cars and we have that core preposition that we are working on. I use the flash card with the visual to help reinforce and get my student’s to put things ‘next to’ or ‘under’.

RECEPTIVE LANGUAGE you can obviously target their comprehension of the concepts (point to the animal that is under something) and I love a classroom treasure hunt (can you find 5 things that are under something?). This set is particularly great for EXPRESSIVE LANGUAGE. Not only can child name the concept (under), but can learn to use the concept in a question (“Do you have the dog that is under the kite) or sentence (“I found the dog under the kite).

And yes Common Core State Standards (L.K.1f, L.1.1i) expect their Kindergarten and Grade 1 students to be able to use prepositions.