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It’s that time of year when apples are in abundance, making it the perfect theme for your speech therapy sessions! Incorporating seasonal themes, like an apple theme, into your speech therapy lessons can add an extra layer of excitement while supporting speech and language goals. In this post, we’ll explore apple-themed speech therapy activities, books, and crafts that will engage students from preschool to 5th grade.
From sensory bins to dramatic play, I’ve gathered some creative apple-themed ideas that are adaptable for a range of speech and language targets. Whether you’re working with preschoolers or older elementary students, these apple activities for speech therapy will help you build out your lesson plans with ease!
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Books are a fantastic way to target a variety of speech and language goals, and an apple theme offers plenty of options to choose from! Whether you’re working on vocabulary, sequencing, or comprehension, these apple-themed books are perfect for preschool through 5th grade.
PreK-1st Grade:
2nd-3rd Grade:
4th-5th Grade:
Additional Apple Books:
These books are perfect to integrate into your sessions, offering ample opportunities for storytelling, retelling, WH-questions, and expanding vocabulary.
Planning a preschool lesson around an apple theme doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Pairing an apple sensory bin with one of the preschool apple-themed books can give you an easy, adaptable lesson plan that engages students in a play-based learning environment. Use apple toys and games to work on speech and language goals like expressive language, turn-taking, and articulation.
Want more ideas? Grab this free Apple-Themed Guide that Kristine from Live Love Speech and myself.
Having your students investigate an apple is a great way to work on speech and language goals with science. And it’s even easier with this free printable from Preschool Play and Learn that helps them study apples.
Bring apples to life with virtual field trips and apple-themed STEM activities! You can visit an apple orchard virtually or show a video of the biggest apple in the world. Use these videos to target vocabulary, sequencing, and summarizing.
Explaining why apples are a superfood can also be a fun way to incorporate facts into your sessions!
If you want to use the book Ten Apples Up On Top, use this STEM apple balance lesson with your preschoolers and kindergarten students. We talk about this lesson in my free Themed Therapy SLP Facebook group with ideas on how to target different speech and language goals.
If you love planning themed therapy lessons, you’ll love my Themed Therapy SLP Membership! There’s a full apple-themed unit for PreK-5th grade, complete with book cheat sheets, lesson companions, articulation homework, task cards, and Google Slides. You’ll also find toy guides and apple-themed crafts that will make planning easy and fun! Join the membership for access to all these resources.
Songs are always a hit in speech therapy! These apple-themed songs will get your students moving and engaging with speech targets:
These songs can be integrated into circle time or movement breaks while targeting articulation, vocabulary, or sentence structure.
Crafts are a great way to get students using language while they create! I have an apple tree and apple core paper plate craft with visual supports available in my Themed Therapy SLP Membership. Another fun idea is this apple stamping craft from Simply Full of Delight, which helps kids practice color identification and fine motor skills. Teaching 2 and 3 year olds has a fun 3-dimensional apple tree art craft that you can use as a prop for spatial concepts or adding to a sensory bin. Simply Every Day Mom has an easy handprint apple tree that is great for following directions and you can glue or write their speech targets on the back.
One of the easiest ways to incorporate speech sound practice into an apple theme is to have sound-loaded phrases and sentence strips (we provide that in the Themed Therapy SLP membership.) Or, use word lists to come up with apple-themed words to practice that have their sounds. We have apple articulation flashcards and speech sound words lists in the membership as well. For students working on speech sound production at the reading and structured conversation level, use the articulation short stories in the membership or they are also available on TPT (there is a free S apple articulation short story in the preview.) To get high trials use this fun free apple opened reinforcer from Speech Sprouts with your magnetic wands. Or use toilet paper roll apple trees and pom poms to put in the tree for every production.
Do you have a favorite book, activity, video, toy, or material that you love using with an apple theme? Let me know your faves in the comments.
