The cold is officially here and it’s time for all the fun winter themes in speech therapy! Read ahead to have your entire winter planned out with any of these 8 fun winter themes for speech therapy.
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1. BEARS
Bears are a fun winter theme in speech therapy. There are tons of stories that you can use with this theme. You can also talk a lot about fact versus fiction with your older students. A favorite activity for preschoolers is reading the book Goldilocks & the Three Bears. You can follow it up with the Goldilocks & the 3 Bears Speech and Language Companion. It’s perfect for preschool-second grade. This set has so many activities to use depending on your student’s IEP goals such as:
-What Doesn’t Belong?
-Same/Different
-Initial Sounds
-Gummy Bear Color Sorting (obviously use the candy for added fun!)
-WH Questions
-Rhyming
This story is a classic and a great way to tie in fiction when using a bear theme. Have you seen this adorable Goldilocks story time play set to accompany it? When we can make stories and themes interactive for students, they are proven to be much more engaged.
Polar bears are another obvious winter theme choice. Read some nonfiction stories with your students to give some background knowledge to those who need it. My favorite is Polar Bears by Gail Gibbons. Then have fun working on articulation with Feed the Polar Bear Articulation Boom Cards. With a chomping mouth, let your polar bear eat 10 tasty speech words from each page. When the student feeds him the word, they will get to hear a “crunch” sound as he eats it!
2. SNOW/ ICE/SNOWMEN
Every SLP uses a snow themed unit in winter, right? Kids tend to love snow, ice and snowmen so these are the perfect themes for winter speech therapy. Start by reading a classic story, The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. Then target sequencing, phonology, articulation, plurals, yes/no questions and more with the Snowy Day Book Companion. This book companion is NO PREP and can be printed out or used digitally.
Winter Boom Cards
Need some Boom Cards to use with your students for the snow/ice theme?
Try:
–Build a Snow Globe Winter Articulation
–Build a Snow Globe with Verbs
If you are focusing on vocabulary with students during this theme, try these Interactive Vocabulary Books for Winter. You can print them and there are Boom Card options as well.
Winter Crafts
Need some fun crafts to tie into your snow and ice theme to display around your speech room? These 2 art activities are perfect for working on articulation speech goals:
Frosty is ready for a chop! All you need to do is print, add scissors and a piece of construction paper. This simple craft is perfect to display on your bulletin board for all to see. You can use any of the sounds included and there is also a blank page if you need to create your own. Primary students really love this one because it is hands-on and keeps them engaged.
2. Design & Dot: Winter Articulation
This winter activity for speech can be used with many different materials depending on your student’s needs and level. If you use bingo daubers for this, these are my favorite. They are small and easy for students to hold. In addition, they have the name of each color in large print on the bottle. If you don’t have bingo daubers and don’t want to purchase any, laminate the pages and use colored chips. Another option is pom pom balls or just have students color with a crayon or marker. The target words that you will work on are at the bottom of the page. With this activity, students do work on both initial and final sounds when practicing.
Sounds included are: F, V, K, G, S, Z, L, SH, CH, TH, R, S Blends, L Blends, R Blends, CVC and Multisyllabic Words.
Taking data
Are you worried about how to take data this month with your younger students and keep them engaged? Dough & Data was created for this EXACT reason. This set is made to collect data while your students PLAY! It’s typically used with preschool through 2nd grade. Simply print out the play-dough mats and put them in sheet protectors or laminate. Give students play dough and let them roll out and create the shapes. It has a digital option as well, in case you are doing teletherapy with any of your speech and language students. Students will drag and drop the “play dough pieces” in this version to make the shape. During, just utilize the different data probing sheets depending on what skill you want to work on with students.
Finally, if you’ve not yet tried a barrier game, I encourage you to do so this month. I enjoy playing barrier games because you can work on so many skills at once. Some skills that I typically focus on when playing are:
- following directions
- deductive reasoning
- giving directions
- vocabulary
- sentence formation
- auditory memory
- storytelling
- basic concepts
- categorization
Finally, check out this blog post explaining how to play barrier games in more detail. I have been using this Winter Barrier Game Set for many years and it’s still just as much fun every time.
3. YETI
Want a fun winter theme that’s not used very often? Have students feed the Yeti with this Boom Card Activity that focuses on articulation. There are 10 “targets” on each page to feed the yeti. Pair it with this silly book, How to Catch a Yeti by Adam Wallace to have even more fun.
4. WINTER SPORTS
Winter sports are another great topic to discuss with your students during winter. Most students have a favorite sport that they can relate to or have background knowledge in. Bingo is always a great game to play in the speech room with even just 2 or more students. Color & Play: Winter Sports Bingo is one of my favorite activities to use at this time of year. This activity truthfully works for any age. It can be easily adapted depending on the skill level of your students.
Try these adaptations:
-Describing BINGO: pull out each picture and give a physical description of the item.
-Classifying BINGO: name the category of the item on the calling card.
-Articulation carryover BINGO: Use a carrier phrase for each card when called. ie: I spy…. or I found….
If it’s an olympic year, winter sports are definitely a MUST to discuss with students. Give them this simple Winter Sports: Dot Page FREEBIE to try. Use these to have students practice a certain number of trials.
Looking for a way to practice vocabulary while discussing winter sports? In the Winter Sports: Activities Packet there is a vocabulary match up activity. Students will match the vocabulary word with the definition.
5. THE MITTEN
Have you read the adorable story, “The Mitten” by Jan Brett before? It is a classic read at winter time. It’s about different animals trying to squeeze into a mitten left on the ground to get out of the cold. Pair The Mitten: Book Companion with the story and you will have activities to last you for many speech sessions. The book companion works on skills such as functions, associations, pronouns, verbs, basic concepts, comparatives and superlatives. “The Mitten” is the perfect read for preschool-2nd grade.
6. HOT CHOCOLATE
Winter is the perfect time to use all things hot chocolate related with your students. Try working on categories or phonological awareness with students and use real marshmallows to make these activities more engaging. You could also grab this FREE board game to create your own activity and use colored marshmallows as game pieces. Finally if you need an activity for students with minimal verbal skills, these Interactive Vocabulary Books: Winter Treats are perfect. You can print, laminate and add velcro to have students match the correct pictures during different parts of the story. In addition, there is also a digital version using Boom Cards. Interactive activities like this are nice for busy hands, especially preschoolers. Students also tend to enjoy these types of activities because they can see where there is a clear end.
7. WOLVES
Wordless pictures books are a great therapy tool. Have you tried them before? I always enjoyed making wolves a theme during winter in my therapy speech lessons. I would use the wordless picture book, Wolf in the Snow by Matthew Cordell and pair it with this Wolf in the Snow Book Companion. This companion set can be printed or used digitally. It has activities for figurative language, antonyms, vocabulary, making inferences, fluency, articulation and more. This Wolf in the Snow Book Companion can be used with students anywhere from kindergarten-6th grade.
8. HIBERNATION
Finally, winter is a great time to teach students all about hibernation and which animals need to hibernate in winter. Some of my favorite books for this theme are:
After giving students some background knowledge all about hibernation, we worked through these Interactive Vocabulary Books.
Which fun winter themes will you be working on in speech therapy?
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