During the spring and summer seasons, making a FUNctional craft in speech therapy that can be used outside is a great way to keep your students engaged. A windsock craft for kids can be adapted easily to cover a lot of goals. In addition, to all the goals you can target while making the craft, there are LOTS of ways to play with the windsock craft while targeting important speech and language goals. Did I mention that this craft is also super engaging for students as well? When I do this craft, I bring in a completed windsock so that my students can see the cool things they can do once they finish theirs. Furthermore, the main part of the windsock craft has an entire blank piece of paper which is prime real estate for working on their goals. This blog post will show you how to make a windsock craft for kids and also, teach you how to adapt this craft for younger and older students!
Windsock Craft For Kids is Easy to Prep
Once you have all the materials for the windsock craft, prep for this craft is pretty easy! Some of my groups I just made the craft during the session. For my groups with younger ages, I prepped parts of the craft, so we could get enough practice in during the session. I have used this craft with LOTS of different ages and all of them loved it, especially my kinder-second grade students.
Materials You Need To Make A Windsock Craft For Kids
- White construction paper (amazon affiliate link).
- Color party streamers (found at Dollar Tree in the party section) or you can cut up strips of colored paper
- Yarn or string
- Hole punch, stapler, glue, and/or tape
How to make a windsock craft
Take the construction paper and attach together with tape, glue or a stapler (I used a stapler), so that it looks like a cylinder. You can have your students glue their speech or language stimulus cards to the paper first before attaching.
If you have paint daubers, students can put dots all over their construction paper every time they say their speech sound or language target. Then, after they are finished, they can put the craft together.
Punch holes at the top of the construction paper. Tie yarn or string in the holes. Cut the party streamers into strips. Then, have the students attach the party streamers with tape or glue (I went with tape, it was the less messy option).
Your windsock is complete and ready to use in speech therapy!
Ways To Adapt The Windsock Craft For Speech & Language Goals
Making the windsock craft provides a lot of opportunities for language. For example, your students working on initiation can make requests for the different craft parts. Furthermore, after student’s finish their windsock craft, you can have them explain the sequencing steps they took to create the craft. Here are some more ways to adapt the windsock craft:
Use this Craft in Your Mixed Groups Easily
- Have students decorate their white paper with dot paint daubers. Every time they say their speech sound or language target, they can add a dot to their paper.
- Students can glue their speech sounds or language targets onto the construction paper. After they finish the craft, they can practice their goals using the pictures on the windsock. I use my Any Craft Companion Pack to adapt this ONE craft for my whole caseload.
Take Your Windsock Craft Outside
- Take the windsock outside to teach vocabulary words. You can target high, low, around, twirl, flutter, fast, slow, and windy.
- Have your students show different preposition words using your windsock such as near, far, under, above, below, around, on, in, and between.
Easy Ways to Use the Paper for Grammar Therapy
Specifically for grammar, you can use the white paper to work on building grammatically correct sentences. I love using the framework for who, did what, and where to incorporate prepositional phrases and syntax. This also allows me an opportunity to target verb tense and noun-verb agreement. You can use these digital grammar Boom Cards™ and have your students write their sentence out.
Use the Windsock to Work on Social Communication
Teach turn-taking, waiting and thinking about others by only bringing out one windsock to play with. Students have to request a turn using their peer’s name, and wait their turn. You can have students do an action that another student requests the student do to work on thinking about other people.
You could make a conversation script or visual to help a student initiate a request for a student to run with them using the windsock. Additionally, your conversation script could have fun comments that the student can use. If you need more information about using conversation scripts, head to this blog post.
For your students working on expanding communication functions or learning CORE vocabulary, you can work on GO, STOP, WANT, LOOK, LIKE, or MORE.
Adapting The Windsock Craft For Your Older Students
If you have older students with goals to work on main ideas, orally retelling a passage, using context clues to identify vocabulary meanings, or summarizing, learning about how windsocks work can be a great lesson because pilots use windsocks to land planes. This gives students insights into the job of a pilot, and the science behind understanding the direction of wind.
- Your older students can write a narrative about spring or summer on the white construction paper. You can give them a challenge by providing a list of themed vocabulary words or adjectives to use in their story.
- Have your students write sentences on the construction paper. Your students working on grammar can write more complex sentences while your articulation students can write sentences with their target words (perfect mixed group activity right there.)
Learn How a Windsock Works
You can use one of the YouTube videos above to discuss how a windsock works. They can share the main idea and details from the video. Pick target vocabulary to discuss from this video and then go test out a windsock outside. Additionally, if you want to add in a writing component, you can have students write a paragraph summarizing how a windsock works. You can use a main idea graphic organizer to help with developing the topic sentence, details and conclusion.
Need More Craft Ideas For Speech Therapy
For those SLPs working during summer, here is a blog post I wrote last year on different summer-themed crafts you can do in speech therapy. If you love doing crafts in speech therapy, then check out all of the craftivities I have in my TPT store. You can use one craft with your whole caseload!
