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In real life, I am not a fan of spiders or any creepy insects for that matter. If I see a spider crawl out of a cupboard or found in a dark corner in a bag in the garage, I literally freak out like someone is attacking me! Can you relate? But when it comes to a engaging, easy-to-adapt themed unit, planning a spider speech therapy lesson plan is perfect for preschool and elementary. Today, I am going to share spider theme activities to help you plan with books, crafts, songs, videos, and more! Plus, a spider unit is a great theme for October and perfect as an alternative to a Halloween theme if you can’t celebrate that holiday at your school.
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Looking for some spider picture books for preschool, kindergarten and upper elementary? Here are some of my faves by age group:
Prek-1st:
Aaarrggh Spider by Lydia Monk – is a great story about a spider that wants to be this family’s pet. It is great for answering comprehension questions, and story retelling. It also works on perspective-taking and how the spider feels verses the family. The spider doesn’t understand why the family freaks out every time they see him.
The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle (affiliate link) is a great book to work on sequencing and teach verbs such as “spin,” “ride,” “eat,” and “run.” This book is also great for teaching the animal category. You can use the pictures in the book to work on describing the animals by attributes and what they are doing or where they are located.
There’s a Spider in this Book by Claire Freedman
2nd-3rd:
I’m Trying to Love Spiders by Beth Barton
Diary of a Spider by Doreen Cronin
4th-5th:
Spiders by Gail Gibbons
Sophie’s Masterpiece by Eileen Spinelli
All of these spider picture books for preschoolers and elementary-aged students have book cheat sheets and companions in the Themed Therapy SLP membership. We also provide open-ended games, task cards, story maps, flashcards, crafts and more for the spider theme. When you subscribe as an annual member, you get access to the spider theme anytime of the school year. As a monthly member, this theme is available September-October.
Having some engaging spider theme activities to pair with your spider picture books brings to life the vocabulary and concepts from the books! You can do spider races to work on AAC CORE vocabulary with go, stop, more, turn, fun, again. Target the verb “blow”, and teach the basic concept “across”. All you need are jumbo straws and mini plastic spiders.
Use a Visual Recipe from Live Love Speech to make this adorable spider snack idea for your students working on functional communication and language skills. I loved having the visuals to target wh-questions, and vocabulary. Then, while the kids eat their snack, we tried to get some natural conversation going about preparing our spider snack.
Make a spider play dough activity where kids build spiders. Dye your playdough black, brown, or purple, and then cut up pipe cleaners and have plastic eyeballs. Use this activity for higher articulation trials by giving them a leg or eye for every production they make.
Make a crawly spider in speech. Students can practice following directions while making this spider craft. You just cut out black circles for the head, print the spider face printable (free printable), and then cut black strips of construction paper. The students fold the construction paper back and forth to make the legs. You can work on simple sequencing of how to make the craft and practice the basic concepts “on,” “before,” and “after” while doing the craft. After creating the craft, you can work on asking which pictures are near the spider’s head and far from the spider’s head.
Students can glue speech or language picture targets on the spider’s legs. Keep the spider crafts as decor or use them as the warm-up for the next session. Send them home for additional speech homework practice. If you are short on prep time, have students write their targets using white crayons or colored pencils.
I love this synonym spider craft from Nicole Allison! It is functional and great for speech room decor and vocabulary. You just need pipe cleaners, paper plates, and Nicole’s free printables.
Simon’s Cat has some FUNNY spider wordless short videos that are perfect for targeting a variety of goals.
This past week, I used Simon’s Cat Scary Legs and Spider Cat in the Attic with my 4-6th grade students to work on several language skills: using the vocabulary word “predict,” perspective-taking skills for the character’s emotions, thought bubbles, sequencing the video with grammatically correct sentences, connecting words (first, next, last) as well as descriptive language. It’s so much easier using these Halloween Simon’s Cat wordless shorts with the spider lesson plan cheat sheets in my TPT store.
Scishowkids makes a pretty good argument about why we shouldn’t be afraid of spiders. This is a great video to discuss main idea and details from a video. You can work on vocabulary tasks with the words “afraid,” “jump,” and “spin.” And, answering the question, “Why Don’t Spiders Stick to Their Webs?” would work great for s-blends, building background knowledge, answering wh-questions, discussing vocabulary, and using complex sentences.
To create easy spider sensory bins, all you need are some fake plastic spiders, web filler, or painter’s tape. These spider sensory bins can be used as reinforcers or to target speech and language goals.
Other fun reinforcer activities are printing out a spider, cutting a hole for a mouth, and feeding it flies, eyeballs, and flashcards to keep students motivated. Similarly, you can tape spider webs to boxes and have students use ball poppers to try and hit the web targets. We provide printables in our toy guide in the Themed Therapy SLP membership spider unit so that you can use these games for any speech or language goal.
Another easy spider game for your mixed groups is to draw a spider on your whiteboard and put points on the spider’s legs and body. Use a suction cup to try and hit the points.
