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Squirrels are hilarious little creatures that I like to enjoy from afar. And by afar, I mean enjoying seeing them on Google Photos, watching them on YouTube videos, or in cute cartoons. Cause in real life, if you touch a squirrel, you might get rabies, lol. Squirrels are fun to watch at the park, and kids see them outside during the fall season. If you need a fall-themed unit for your preschool and elementary students, this post will include squirrel speech therapy activities for younger and older students. Not only are squirrels engaging, but they are great to do with a woodland animal or winter animals theme!
When I pick a theme for therapy, I utilize that theme across a lot of ages and treatment areas. Planning therapy is easier for me when I use a theme. And I can teach the content better when I use one theme because I am more knowledgeable about the subject. Plus, even though the theme may be similar, each group may have a slightly different activity, which makes my therapy feel novel and FUN for me, the therapist. We have to be engaged with the content, too! Once I select a theme, I then look at the goals of my students. After that, I find books, YouTube videos, and easy crafts, or I create materials that match that theme. A squirrel-theme is easy to adapt for ages, and covers a lot of speech and language goals, making it a winner in my book for a theme to plan. The Themed Therapy SLP membership provides a full themed unit for preschool through 5th grade to help you with planning.
You can target lots of different skills by using a book. A book is a great low-prep resource because you can use the illustrations as well as the story to target a lot of different goals during extension lessons after reading the book. Here are some fun books that have a squirrel theme (amazon affiliate links included):
Prek-1st grade:
2nd-3rd grade:
4th-5th grade:
If I don’t have a certain book or didn’t have time to purchase or check out from the library, I will utilize YouTube for book read alouds like the one below.
I made a little crazy squirrel bean bag toss game (free download.) We practiced our sounds in words and sentences! If they landed on the 20-point squirrel, they got 20 points added to their score and had to say their sound 20 times.
One of the best ways to get high trials and work on language skills is using non-fiction passages that are sound-loaded. You can hit s-blends, R, complex clusters, L, and more with a squirrel theme. Here are some articles that are sound-loaded and align with a squirrel theme:
In my TPT store, I also have a squirrel articulation short stories resource that is sound-loaded with homework sheets (this is also in the Themed Therapy SLP membership.)
We have been playing the Educational Insights The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game (amazon affiliate link) in therapy with my I’m a Nut Language cards. It has made therapy so easy to plan because I can grab n’ go! We worked on using verbs in sentences, describing by attributes, multiple meaning words, and categories!
For your play-based speech therapy sessions, you can use a treehouse toy set with squirrel figurines to work on verb actions, spatial concepts, wh-questions, and story retell.
I have also found the BEST squirrel dog toys that are great for spatial concepts, as well as story retell props.
To target comprehension, summarizing, vocabulary, and building knowledge about squirrels, use YouTube videos to work on these more advanced language skills:
Mystery Doug also has a great hands-on science activity about squirrels that you can use for co-teaching/push-in or small groups.
For those of you SLPs that are going into the classroom for whole class language lessons, I have an easy to follow squirrel language push-in unit to help with planning. Each themed lesson comes with Google Slide presentations, a letter home to parents, recommendations for books, links to YouTube read alouds and movement breaks. There are 3 to 5 language extension activities that can be run as a whole class or in small stations. It also includes cheat sheet guides for teachers and classroom aids, so that they can run stations! Here, students are working on sorting categories into the correct squirrel tree and doing squirrel prepositions, Simon Says.
YouTube is a great source of videos to teach skills. They are free and easy to prep! You can make a quick cheat sheet with all the goals you are targeting when using these videos. I will share some ideas on how I use these videos in therapy.
Squirrels are pretty silly creatures. I went on YouTube and found some cute squirrel videos that I used to entice my students to want to talk about squirrels! All my kids including my 4/5th graders were laughing and engaged when I showed them these funny videos.
I let them watch part of the video clips as a way for them to observe what squirrels look like, things that they do and places they hang out. Then, we used this Sentence Frame Graphic Organizer (FREE download) to describe and discuss squirrels.
Simon’s Cat Wordless Short YouTube videos make for great low-prep, high engagement activities. Use this squirrel-themed video to work on parts of speech, inference, body language, story retell, wh-questions and more!
It’s super easy to adapt for mixed groups using my fall and Thanksgiving Simon’s Cat speech therapy cheat sheets. They have articulation, vocabulary, story elements, inference questions, cause and effect and more!
Do you have a fun squirrel activity you love to do with your preschoolers or middle school students? Share in the comments below some activities, books, toys, or resources you use to make a squirrel themed unit come to life!
