CYBER SALE! ➔
Last updated: December 17, 2025
By December, many SLPs are burnt out and don’t want to spend hours planning therapy. That’s why I’m sharing fun, low-prep Christmas speech therapy activities that work well for preschool and elementary caseloads. These easy Christmas speech and language activities are perfect to pull out when you’re in full SLP survival mode during the busy holiday season.
The key to getting through December is to have FUN while still supporting your students’ goals. Use this month to focus on naturally implementing speech therapy targets through meaningful, hands-on activities. Christmas-themed speech therapy activities help build schema and real experiences that students can draw from when learning language. Most importantly, this time of year is a great reminder that strong speech therapy sessions are built on connection and relationships, not just data points.
So, put the data binder away this week and focus on the little people in front of you. It is hard to do this when you know you have paperwork to complete before winter break. Remember that those holiday parties at the end of the week are the perfect time to close your door to finish your reports, IEPs, Medi-Cal billing, and updating therapy logs. Some of our students go home to environments that aren’t the most pleasant, so just remember that a little extra love from you may be what they need to hold onto during winter break. Now, let’s chat about Christmas speech therapy activities to help you plan for preschool and elementary.
Christmas books are an easy way to target language, articulation, and comprehension goals during December. You can use holiday books to work on story retell, describing, vocabulary, WH-questions, inferencing, and grammar—without extra prep. A few of my favorite Christmas books for speech therapy include The Gingerbread Man, Bear Stays Up for Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and The Night Before Christmas.
Here are some Christmas books to recommend based on ages and skills:
The Gingerbread Man by Gail Yerill – I have a blog post with ideas to pair with this book. Great for story retell, grammar, wh-questions, and vocabulary. Perfect for R, J, K, and F sounds.
Bear Stays Up for Christmas by Karma Wilson – has opportunities for rhyming, wh-questions, vocabulary, problem solving, verbs, synonyms, and st-blends and fr-blends.
There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bell by Lucille Colandro – great for story retell, AAC core words, past-tense verb morpheme, or L, s-blends, and R sounds.
Little Blue Truck’s Christmas by Alan Schertle – has repetitive text, great for adjectives, rhyming and L, K, and R sounds.
Stick Man by Julia Donaldson – a fun rhyming book that you can work on inferencing, wh-questions, vocabulary, st-blends, and story elements.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss –
How to Catch Santa Clause by Adam Wallace – this book has rhyming, verbs, inferencing and sequencing while also working on K, S, l-blends, and r-blends.
How Santa Got His Job by Stephen Krensky – work on narrative structures, vocabulary, inferencing, verbs and complex sentence structures and perfect for the S sound.
Moostletoe by Margie Palatini – is a fun book for vocabulary
If you need some Christmas speech therapy activities to pair with your Christmas books, use my Christmas Push-In Language Lesson Plan Guides to support your preschool and early elementary caseload. And, you can work on a variety of vocabulary and grammar goals with this Christmas-themed language activity resource.
I love coming up with Christmas speech therapy activities that you can pair with books. For the book Mooseltoe by Margie Palatini, purchase brown pipe cleaners and plastic beads from the dollar store or craft store to make moosetaches. Each time your student says their speech sound 5 times, they can string a bead on the moose-tache as a Christmas light. If your students are working on describing items, they can get a bead for every attribute they can share about the noun. Naming items in category groups, creating sentences, and sharing expected behaviors are more skills you can target!
The Gingerbread Man is an excellent theme for December! After you have read the book and worked on story retelling, describing, and grammar concepts, you can play this fun game I created with any of your articulation or language flashcards! I was inspired by Busy Bee Speech’s Instagram photo using paperclips with gingerbread man pics. You only need a Card Deck, paper clips, and a magnetic wand. I printed some gingerbread men and foxes (free printable) on colored craft paper (print more gingerbread men than foxes).
Check out the Christmas Language Activities for Building Vocabulary and Grammar if you need vocabulary and verb flashcards.
December is a great time to keep articulation practice simple and fun. You can target speech sounds using Christmas vocabulary, themed games, books, and short video clips. I’ve put together a full list of Christmas speech therapy activities for your articulation and phonology goals that make it easy to get high trials while still keeping sessions festive and stress-free.
During December, it’s always bananas trying to attend IEP meetings and finish paperwork before winter break. So, save your low-prep activities for this time of the year.
That’s why I always recommend Christmas speech therapy activities that you can prep in 5 minutes or less because I know how limited on time you have for lesson planning.
Pull up the Christmas Simon’s Cat videos to use in therapy to cover your mixed articulation and language goals. You can use A Christmas Yarn wordless short video with my free speech therapy cheat sheet to rock your next mixed group session.
There are SO many goals you can cover while using Simon’s Cat videos such as articulation, tier 2 vocabulary, cause and effect, inferencing, verb actions, story retell and more!
If you need more Christmas speech therapy cheat sheets,my TPT store has 6 Christmas Simon’s Cat video lesson plans.
Click here to get your FREE Christmas Simon’s Cat Speech Therapy Cheat Sheet
When planning Christmas speech therapy activities, you want an activity that is easy to adapt for various goals. Use the Christmas sequencing stories with pictures to target Christmas vocabulary, grammar, sequencing, wh-questions, and story retelling. It’s easy to work on many speech and language goals with sequencing stories for wrapping a present, making a gingerbread house, writing letters to Santa, and decorating a Christmas tree.
There are lots of sound-loaded opportunities to work on articulation carryover:
R & R-blends – Wrapping a present, Decorating a Christmas tree or writing a letter to Santa
J & R – Making a gingerbread house
L – building a gingerbread house and letter to Santa
The biggest tip for working on articulation goals with a language activity is picking out sound-loaded words or phrases for your students to practice in drill and during story retell.
If you need more sequencing short stories like this, we provide sets for over 36 themes in the Themed Therapy SLP membership.
If you love using crafts in therapy, Christmas is the perfect time to lean into hands-on speech therapy activities. Crafts make it easy to target articulation, phonology, core vocabulary, following directions, and fine motor skills—all while keeping students engaged. I recently compiled a roundup of my favorite Christmas speech therapy crafts, including visual supports and articulation-friendly options that work well for mixed-ability groups.
Having Christmas speech therapy activities you can also send home as homework saves you time with planning. Use the 3D Christmas tree craft for articulation and language groups available on TPT or my website shop, it’s the perfect FUNctional decor for at home speech therapy practice. Another Christmas craft that can be sent home as work is the ornament craft that you can get on TPT. You can make these crafts over a couple of sessions and use them as therapy while you get progress monitoring data or work with students.
For all my SLPs who love to do push-in and whole-class lessons, I have some Christmas speech therapy activities that will help with lesson plans! Plan a fun ugly sweater lesson. My SDC K-2 teacher developed this engaging Christmas craft and did it as a whole-class activity. We had the best time working on lots of skills. She had many stickers, pom poms, and extra art supplies, and set them out on the floor using art trays. Here is a tutorial on how to make a vest from a paper bag. During the craft activity, I was kneeling beside a student, asking them questions as they decorated. Another student tried to squeeze past me without saying “Excuse me” or “Can I get by?” This clever SLP decided to block the way every time the student had to get more decorations, so we could work on initiating “excuse me.” It was a tremendous natural social communication exchange. December is a fun month to try some whole-class lessons and more hands-on activities like decorating cookies, building gingerbread man houses, or doing some fun games.
Christmas speech therapy activities don’t have to be complicated—YouTube videos can do a lot of the heavy lifting this time of year. Have you tried using Christmas commercials in speech therapy? They’re packed with language skills to target and work especially well for mixed groups. I like letting students watch a short portion of the video and then pausing it to discuss inferencing, such as the time of year, where the person is, and what the characters might be thinking or feeling.
These Christmas speech therapy activities also make it easy to work on predicting what might happen next by using visual and contextual clues. You can target summarizing and identifying the main idea, or jot down sound-loaded words and phrases to practice articulation while watching the commercial. For articulation carryover, try doing a few quick drills with a student’s speech word list and then have them retell the commercial or answer WH-questions about what they watched.
If you’re looking for variety, Elf movie clips or other Christmas YouTube videos are a fun alternative and work just as well for targeting speech and language goals during December.
The Surprise (This one will make you cry)
Hobby Lobby Christmas Commercial – Hot Chocolate Stand
The Magical Cookbook (Tear jerker)
Well, there you have it! In speech therapy, there is no more fretting about “what will I do all week?” The key to a great week is cozy coffee drinks, yummy lunches (so get some good stuff), an ugly Christmas sweater to sport, and some festive music to listen to while doing paperwork!
I hope you have a great holiday. Make sure you include some “ME” time, so you can reflect on all the blessings of this year. I will keep those of you who are going through a difficult time in my prayers. Lamentations 3: 31-33 “For no one is cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone. Keep this close to your heart when you are feeling love. I also love reflecting on Philippians 4:8-9.
