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If you work with preschool through 5th grade students, planning spring therapy sessions for mixed articulation and language groups can feel overwhelming. This post shares spring speech and language activities that are easy to adapt across grade levels and IEP goals. Whether you’re targeting speech sounds, vocabulary, grammar, or comprehension, these ideas help you cover multiple goals in one session and simplify your spring planning.
These spring activities are designed to be flexible. Many can be used to target articulation and language goals at the same time, making them ideal for small groups, push-in services, or mixed caseloads.
If you’re looking for a complete planning guide with articulation, language, and seasonal resources organized in one place, check out my Spring Speech Therapy Activities for PreK–5 post.
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If you love using literacy to cover speech and language goals, here are some of great spring speech therapy books organized by age range:
Prek-1st Grade
2nd-3rd Grade
4th-5th Grade
These books work well for targeting articulation carryover during retell while also addressing vocabulary, grammar, and comprehension goals.
Many of these books included have book cheat sheets and visual story maps in the Themed Therapy SLP membership. Sign up for monthly or annual plans; don’t stress about themed therapy planning. You can read more about shared book reading strategies with these spring-themed speech therapy books.
During the spring season, bugs are everywhere, and flowers begin to bloom. You can do a spring bug pretend play activity with these bug figurines. Or, you can make a garden dramatic play activity or flower shop dramatic play with items from your local Dollar Tree. Check out this blog post to read more about spring play-based speech therapy activities. There is also a Real Talk SLP podcast episode 81 on play themes for spring too. If you are on the hunt for some spring speech therapy games, here are some fun ones:
Having some spring themed toy sets, games and pretend play activities makes it easier to adapt your materials for the speech and language goals on your caseload.
Using a spring song to add movement is a simple way to keep students engaged while targeting speech and language goals. Spring songs work especially well in push-in services and small groups because you can embed articulation practice, WH-questions, vocabulary, and sentence formulation into the activity. Here are a few spring songs that support spring speech and language activities:
For upper elementary students, spring-themed YouTube videos can be a low-prep way to target articulation carryover, inferencing, perspective-taking, and comprehension. These videos work well for mixed groups because you can adapt questions and prompts to different goals within the same session. Some favorite spring YouTube videos include:
To make speech and language lesson planning easier, you can use Spring Simon’s Cat Speech Therapy Cheat Sheets for 6 spring wordless short videos.
If you need a FREE Google Slides presentation with organized spring YouTube videos for speech and language therapy, you can access the full list in the linked resource below.
If you are looking for spring speech and language activities, there are a TON of great sensory bins that will help you work on articulation, vocabulary, grammar, describing, wh-questions, and more! Sensory bins are especially helpful for mixed-ability groups because you can prep one material activity and then adapt it to your group’s speech and language goals. Plus, kids dig them because they are tactile and hands-on.
The Themed Therapy SLP membership also has a spring sensory bin and a cheat sheet lesson plan along with sensory bins for insects, chores, Earth Day, and picnic.
Some of the best spring speech and language activities are with low-prep crafts. You can pair spring crafts with your favorite books to have a complete lesson. If you want spring-themed crafts with articulation and language targets, check out this How to Grow a Flower craft.
Make in the Tall Tall Grass crafts and pair them with the book! Simply Speech has free printables for this craft.
You can also check out some other spring speech therapy crafts on this blog post.
In spring, talking about flowers and insects is a great theme smash! For SLPs who love the book, In the Tall Tall Grass by Denise Fleming then get this free Tall tall grass digital lesson plan for teletherapy.
For more themed therapy ideas to do in spring, this blog post has 5 themes you can use!
For spring speech and language activities outside, check out this bubbles toy blog post with a free toy companion cheat sheet guide to give you LOTS of articulation and language goals targets.
You can take your students outside on an I Spy hunt with their DIY binoculars to make it even more engaging. Make the binoculars first in your session, and then head out for I spy hunts using these free I spy game mats.
If you have a lot of different language goals or need resources for push-in and small groups, check out these spring language activities:
When looking for spring speech and language activities for older students, consider using high-interest nonfiction articles or short videos that align with seasonal topics. For example, you could explore articles about baseball season, spring weather patterns, gardening, or animal life cycles. Pair these with short science clips or experiments about topics like pollination or why birds lay eggs in the spring.
These types of spring-themed resources work well for targeting articulation carryover, summarizing, Tier 2 vocabulary, cause and effect, inferencing, and complex sentence structures in mixed groups. Some great websites to find reading passages are ReadWorks.org and NewsELA. If you love incorporating science into your sessions, Mystery Doug is one of my go-tos and has a good video called, “Why Do Birds Lay Eggs in Spring?” and a hands-on science activity for learning about pollination and plant reproduction.
Another great way to cover both articulation and language goals is by using real photos of spring activities. Search for spring images on free photo sites and add them to a Google Slides. Use the visuals to target WH-questions, sentence formulation, perspective-taking, inferencing, and having students use their speech sound targets in connected sentences. If you need ready-made materials, try the spring inference picture task cards.
Need short stories with questions that are no prep and use spring vocabulary? Check out this set in my website store that is scaffolded for different levels. There are also short stories like this in the themed therapy SLP membership too!
Several spring YouTube videos for older students are also organized in the free Spring Google Slides to address these goals! And we have 4th-5th grade themed activities in the Themed Therapy SLP membership.
Plan some spring-themed STEM activities to perk your older student’s interests. I love teaching tier II vocabulary and using these activities to give them a practical application of the words. Plus, you can target wh-questions, explain what happened, etc. The Educators Spin on It has a fun plastic eggs stem challenge.
Stem Education Guide also has some great spring STEM activities that don’t look too difficult or costly!
Talking about a flower life cycle is a great unit to plan in spring, and I cover all the videos, goals, and activities you can do HERE.
Planning spring sessions for mixed articulation and language groups doesn’t have to feel complicated. When you choose flexible spring speech and language activities that can be adapted across grade levels and goals, you can cover more objectives in a single session while keeping students engaged.
Bookmark this post and rotate these ideas throughout the season to simplify your planning. And if you’re looking for a comprehensive guide with even more articulation, language, and seasonal resources, be sure to check out my Spring Speech Therapy Activities for PreK–5 post for a complete planning hub.
I’d love to hear what your favorite spring speech and language activities are for mixed groups—share in the comments or tag me on social media @themedtherapyslp!
