Fresh Spring Speech Therapy Activities
Looking for Spring Speech Therapy Activities to try with your students? Winter is coming to an end, and it’s fun to freshen up your speech and language sessions. If you’re a busy SLP who needs some inspiring speech therapy activities and ideas for spring, look no further. This blog post is PACKED with ideas!
In this blog post, I’ll be discussing
- explaining “spring” to your students
- an article you can share in speech therapy detailing the signs of spring
- spring books for speech therapy
- butterfly gardens
- spring snack ideas for speech therapy
- spring speech therapy activities (a resource round-up)
Celebrating Spring with Your Speech Therapy Students
Why not start by explaining what spring actually is? In other words, what “group” or “category” does spring belong to? Many speech therapy students may not know that spring is classified as a season.
Seasons can be very confusing for many students, and I like to start by reviewing what all of the seasons are. This is especially great for students with defining and describing objectives.
Next, you can explain some of the “signs of spring” using this National Geographic Kids article.
Signs of spring include tadpoles, blossoms blooming, buzzing bees, and longer days! This article is a quick and easy way to start a discussion about spring.
If you prefer to show a video, this Youtube find was pretty informative (it is UK-based, but still very relevant for students in the US!)
Spring Books for Speech Therapy
Do you love using books to target speech and language objectives?
If so, here are some spring-themed books you could try reading with your speech therapy students!
- For younger students, check out “Little Green Frog” by Ginger Swift. This is a short book with a cute rhyme that provides hands-on interaction as students can lift flaps to discover various animals- all with a spring theme! The best part? This book is very sturdy, and my “at-home copy” has survived my very zealous toddler!
- Another great spring book for preschoolers is “Worm Weather” by Jean Taft. This is a book with fun pictures and engaging, simple rhymes. With a little SLP creativity, this book is really wonderful if you are working on imitating actions, sounds, or exclamations. It is more about weather than worms, as a heads up.
- Another great spring book is “The Magic Schoolbus: Inside a Beehive” by Joanna Cole. As Ms. Frizzle and her class explore a beehive together, you’ll have lots of chances to work on a variety of speech and language goals (including comprehension, vocabulary, and sequencing).
- Elementary students (and may even some middle school students) will love learning about all sorts of bugs while reading sections of the “Ultimate Bugopedia (The Most Complete Bug Reference Book Ever)”- by Nancy Honovich (National Georgaphic Kids). You could choose any bug your student finds interesting and use these informative passages as an easy way to target a variety of speech and language objectives with a buggy, “spring” theme! The pictures in this reference book are pretty incredible!
Butterfly Garden Spring Activity for Speech Therapy
How about bringing nature up close with a butterfly garden? I used this kit with my own children. It includes a cup with live caterpillars, and all the materials needed to help them grow into beautiful butterflies! No worries, this is easy to set up!
Spring Snack Ideas for Speech Therapy
Do you love using food in speech therapy? It’s a fun, interactive way to target so many speech and language objectives! You can work on vocabulary, creating sentences, describing, following directions, and more!
I’m posting a few spring snack ideas to get you started- just always be sure to check for any food allergies before using these with your speech therapy students!
- Dirt and Worms: Yum! Despite the gross-sounding name, your students will absolutely love this pudding, crumbled cookies, and gummy worms treat! You can find the recipe here.
- Chocolate Pretzel Nests: Okay, it looks messy (I’ll admit), but amazing! The recipe can be found here on ourkidsmom.com!
- Ants on a Log: All you need are celery sticks, peanut butter, and raisins to create this classic treat! You can find a recipe here (reference: activekids.com).
- Spring Flower Snacks: I love this spring flower snack idea from zak.com! You can simply draw or create a flower out of construction paper or cardstock. Then, place a cupcake cup in the center. Fill it with fruit, such as blueberries, and enjoy!
Spring Speech Therapy Activities
Need some fun- and easy- spring speech therapy activities to try with your students? In this section, I’ve divided suggested materials by age group/ therapy topic, so you can easily find what you need for your specific caseload.
Preschool Following Directions Activities for Spring
Are you working on following directions in speech therapy? This spring following directions activity includes lively, bright spring-themed pictures that are sure to engage your students!
These spring speech and language activities are simple to use. You’re busy, so having grab ‘n go options at your fingertips for providing themed spring speech therapy is a MUST.
If you’d like, you can print out, laminate, and cut out each card for repeated use. If you don’t have time for that, just print them out and store them in a binder.
Your speech therapy student will need to listen closely to each direction! He or she will be pointing to demonstrate knowledge of a variety of concepts, like:
- Inclusion (all, and, all but one)
- Sequence (first, second, middle, last)
- Location (top, bottom, between, next to)
- Temporal (before, after, then, at the same time)
- & correlative conjunctions (both…and, either…or, neither…nor, not only… but also)
These concepts are “embedded” into each direction. In other words, the direction itself will include the concept being targeted. An example of a direction that has a “location” concept embedded might be: “Point to the rain boots in the TOP row.”
Preschool Speech and Language Spring Gardening Activities
Gardening is such a fun theme to use in spring! This preschool speech therapy resource has a spring garden theme, and is packed with engaging, low ink activities to use with your preschoolers! Your students can start by putting together a gardening book. After that, you can choose which speech and language objectives you want to target. There are worksheets to target open-ended articulation, basic concepts, WH questions, describing, rhyming, and more!
Spring Grammar Worksheets for Pre-K through 2nd Grade Speech Therapy Students
Need some print ‘n go worksheets to target grammar? This spring grammar activity packet has everything you need! I pair these spring worksheets with daubers, but you could also use a magnetic wand and chips! These grammar worksheets target pronouns, understanding sentences, regular plurals, past tense verbs, subject-verb agreement, and more! They’re perfect to use with your preschool through second grade speech therapy students.
Spring Receptive and Expressive Language Activities for Upper Elementary
Your third, fourth, and fifth grade speech therapy students will enjoy the activities in this spring language resource! These efficient activities will allow you to target a variety of language objectives in your speech therapy session- including conjunctions, regular and irregular past tense verbs, listening for details, following directions, main idea, cause and effect, predicting, and multiple meaning words. These worksheets are wonderful for mixed speech therapy groups! Gretchen H., SLP, said, “I am constantly looking for a sweet spot of therapy materials for my mid-upper elementary students. This packet is wonderful. Just right.”
Spring Speech Therapy Worksheets for Subordinating Conjunctions
Next, be sure to check out these spring subordinating conjunction worksheets! They’re ideal for second, third, and fourth grade speech therapy students. Your students can work on finishing sentences that contain subordinating conjunctions.
This speech therapy resource provides 17 low ink grammar / sentence structure worksheets to allow you to easily work on conjunctions and creating complex spoken sentences.
The following subordinating conjunctions are targeted:
- after
- when
- as soon as
- as long as
- until
- while
- if
- even if
- in case
- unless
- because
- since
- so that
This is an easy way to introduce – or reinforce- creating complex sentences using conjunctions!
Articulation Spring Craft for Speech Therapy
Your speech therapy students will LOVE creating their snail flip books while they work on a variety of articulation sounds! This craft is perfect for spring, and you’ll love that can easily send these crafts home to encourage carryover practice.
The speech sounds targeted in this spring craft are:
- k initial, medial, final
- g initial, medial, final
- p initial, medial, final
- b initial, medial, final
- m initial, medial, final
- t initial, medial, final
- d initial, medial, final
- s initial, medial, final
- z initial, medial, final
- ch initial, medial, final
- sh initial, medial, final
- j initial, medial, final
- sm initial
- sn initial
- sw initial
- sp initial
- sk initial
- sl initial
- r initial
- th voiceless initial
- f initial
- l initial
Spring Story Elements Activities for Speech Therapy
Finally, your upper elementary and middle school students (grades 3-6) will enjoy these open-ended spring story elements worksheets. The best part is, you can pair these activities with any spring book! The graphics included are not “too childish”, and the variety of objectives targeted will make your SLP life a whole lot easier! You’ll be able to address story elements, retelling the story, cause and effect, problem and resolution, comprehension, vocabulary, and more with these spring worksheets!
I hope this post provided you with a few fresh ideas for spring. As always- thanks for stopping by!
Check out more fresh ideas here!
