I am all about using themes in my speech therapy room. Winter is the best season for building your therapy material stash! One reason winter is a great theme is that you can use it across various grades and ages. In this blog post, I will share a TON of winter speech therapy activities for easy planning. You won’t have to scroll on Pinterest hours looking for winter-themed speech and language activities because all the ideas you need are in this blog post!

This blog post has been completely updated with winter-themed books, toy recommendations, and materials, as it was first published in 2015 and just got an upgrade in December 2022. When you click any of the Amazon affiliate links, I earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. 

Winter-Themed Books for Your Elementary Speech Therapy Caseload

Pick books for your caseload by age or by treatment area. Here are some winter books you can use by age:

Prek-1st:

The Snowy Day Ezra Jack Keats

Let it Snow by Maryann Cocca-Leffler

The Jacket I Wear in the Snow by Shirely Neitzel

2nd-3rd:

Immi’s Gift by Karin Littlewood

Lemonade in Winter by Emily Jenkins

Snow by Uri Shulvitz

4th/5th:

The Mitten by Jan Brett

Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett

Snow Day by Lester L. Laminack 

Winter Themed Open Ended Games

Having open-ended games for winter help, you plan for your mixed groups. Here are some of my favorite winter reinforcers:

• Don’t Melt the Snowman Mystery Word Game (Free printable)
• Yeti and Elf Snowball Fight Game (Free printable)
• Build a Snowman Speech and Language Game
• Winter Roll and Race by Peachie Speechie (Free printable)
• Winter games on PDS Kids
• Open-ended Board Games by Ms. Gardenia’s Speech Room (Free printable)
• Snowman, Santa and gingerbread man magnetic wand games (Free printable)

If you have students that enjoy movement breaks check out this snowflake hop gross motor activity from Pink Oatmeal.

Join the Themed Therapy SLP Membership

Winter Toys for Speech Therapy

When planning a themed unit, having toys, games, or themed props can bring to life some of the concepts you are teaching!

You can increase engagement by using toys and props instead of worksheets. If you need snowman toy ideas, check out this blog post.

For your students that love Frozen, you can use these snowflake wands to freeze their speech words, or add them to pretend play activities.

Have a snowball fight or set up bowling pins with winter vocabulary pictures taped to the pins, and students can try to knock them down.

Winter is the perfect time to pull out a hot cocoa play set, or you can DIY it with some mugs and spoons from home!

Adding some games to your winter-themed therapy stash can be great for mixed groups, and you may be able to use the game pieces in therapy! This Disney Frozen Frantic Forest looks fabulous as a mixed-group game. Don’t Break the Ice and Thin Ice are good winter games. If you need a game companion cheat sheet for Don’t break the ice, there is one in the toy companions. 

Winter Activities for Younger Students

Check out this blog post for winter-themed articulation ideas to engage your students with speech-sound goals. You can use winter picture scenes to cover speech and language goals. For more winter ideas, check out this blog post from Crazy Speech World.

Winter Activities for Older Students

I am a BIG fan of using America’s Funniest Home Videos in speech with older students. You can use the winter versions to cover a lot of goals! Check it out here.

For speech and language resources to use with older speech students, check these out:

Middle School Winter Print N’ Go

Winter Themed Build a Sentence Grammar Worksheets

Winter Inference Picture Task Cards

Winter-Themed Simon’s Cat YouTube Video cheat sheets

Bilinguistics has a great blog post with some winter themed poems and ideas for how to use in sessions.

For winter YouTube videos to use with your older speech therapy students, head to this blog post.