Being the material hoarder that I am, this SLP has enough materials on snow and snowmen to last aaaaallllllll winter long. That being said, that theme can get old after about a month. To change up the fun during winter, I like to find other themes that would go along with the season. Using penguins in speech therapy is a great theme. I have found lots of resources to cover using penguins in speech therapy.
Resources using Penguins in Speech Therapy
When I build my materials around a theme, I try to find books, games, toys and printables to use with that theme. I included some amazon affiliates in this post for your convenience.
Tacky The Penguin is a great book to use in your sessions. I have heard Pierre The Penguin is a great book as well! Whitney SLP has a great book companion that goes with that book.
Tacky the penguin doesn’t do things the right way, so there are some fun social skill opportunities in this book. We practice greetings the Tacky way vs. the penguin companion way. The students can practice making smart guesses about what the penguins and hunters could be thinking about Tacky based on non-verbal cues.
There are a lot of verbs and vocabulary in the book that are visual. This is a great book to also work on answering comprehension questions and story narration.
Penguin stuffed animals are the perfect addition to your therapy stash. SLP’s can use the stuffed penguin to work on basic concepts. In my sessions, I turned over a plastic white trash to be the “iceberg” and then had the students follow directions with the penguin.
I set the trash can up across the room and my students waddled around the iceberg. This was a great way to show the verb “waddle” as well as work on the concept around.
The stuffed penguin can also be a great visual for teaching turn taking in conversation. The student holding the penguin would share a comment or question. Then, they pass it to the next student to answer the question/comment.
Plan hands on lessons with Penguins for Speech Therapy
I am a big fan of using sensory bins in speech therapy. There is research that shows that when children can touch, hear, and see through learning will remember what is being taught to them. I made an easy penguin sensory bin with water beads that I found at the dollar store, Styrofoam for the icebergs and these cute penguins I got on amazon. You can see all my winter sensory bin ideas HERE!
With the penguin sensory bin, we acted out the story from Tacky The Penguin, worked on verb actions, initiating comments/questions with peers, targeted basic concepts, and described penguins.
My students really engage with materials that incorporate matching and sorting.
Find FREE videos on Youtube About Penguins
This video is a fun way to show kids what penguins look like in real life. Penguins are just really fun to watch!
Skills you can target with penguin videos:
- Social Skills- initiating, commenting, on topic remarks, waiting turn to share, making social inferences about what penguins could be thinking and sharing opinions about the video.
- Language- describing penguins by attributes as well as labeling actions that the penguin is doing. You can pause the video and have students generate sentences with an adjective, verb, and prepositional phrases.
My own two children are really into drawing right now. I have a four year old and an eight year old. We have been following these wonderful drawing tutorials on youtube to learn how to draw! As I have been following along, I realized how many basic concept words are used to explain drawing. If you have students that like to draw, but have language impairments, this can be a great resource! They can explain the steps for drawing a penguin using basic concepts, describing words and more complex sentences.
What resources have you found with a penguin theme for speech therapy?