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Planning summer speech therapy activities for preschool through middle school students doesn’t have to feel overwhelming or time-consuming. Whether you’re managing ESY services, supporting private clients, or just looking for fresh ideas, this blog post will help you plan engaging and purposeful sessions. You’ll find a round-up of books, sensory bins, crafts, YouTube videos, websites, and printable materials—all designed around summer themes to keep learning fun. A theme-based approach can streamline your therapy planning while helping students make meaningful connections across speech and language goals. Get ready to explore low-prep, hands-on summer speech therapy activities that make sessions feel more like summer fun than work!
One of the easiest ways to build engaging summer speech therapy sessions is by using themed picture books. You can work on articulation, vocabulary, story retell, grammar, and more—all within a meaningful context. Below is a curated list of summer books for speech therapy organized by age group to help you find the right fit for your students.
For even more ideas, check out my full book list: Summer Books for Speech Therapy
These books are perfect for working on basic concepts, WH-questions, and vocabulary with your youngest learners:
These books offer rich vocabulary and more complex story structures for targeting narrative skills, main idea, and more:
Use these books to tackle deeper themes, figurative language, and perspective-taking with your older students:
Looking for themed book lists for specific topics? Try these next:
If you’re looking for low-prep and fun summer speech therapy activities, crafts are a fantastic way to keep students engaged while targeting their goals. Summer-themed crafts are perfect for mixed groups because they can be easily adapted to address articulation, grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structure.
These easy summer speech therapy crafts also serve as take-home practice or bulletin board displays, giving students a chance to showcase their hard work!
Inside the Themed Therapy SLP membership, you’ll find printable summer crafts for:
General summer themes
Incorporating summer-themed play into speech therapy is a great way to increase student engagement while targeting a wide range of goals. Play-based therapy helps make learning feel natural—and during the summer months, it can be especially powerful to use outdoor-inspired activities that allow movement and creativity.
If you’re looking for inspiration, this post breaks down how to plan play themes for summer using simple materials and easy routines. You’ll find ideas for small worlds, sensory play, and pretend play setups that align with speech and language goals.
Take advantage of the warmer weather with play activities that get students moving while still targeting core speech goals. Here are a few summer speech therapy activities with toys:
When you need a quick activity that still targets goals, YouTube videos can be an effective tool for both articulation and language therapy. With the right videos, you can build vocabulary, model grammar structures, answer WH-questions, or even work on social communication goals like perspective-taking. This is why I always hunt for summer speech therapy activities using engaging videos!
Incorporating summer-themed YouTube videos is also a great way to introduce seasonal vocabulary and make therapy feel more like fun than work—especially during ESY or in teletherapy sessions.
Not sure where to start? I’ve already done the organizing for you! This collection of summer YouTube videos for speech therapy includes:
You’ll also get a free Google Slides file with links grouped by category, making it super easy to plan and pull up videos in your sessions.
If you’re looking for effective and engaging summer speech therapy activities to build language skills, themed resources can help streamline planning while supporting your students’ individual goals. Whether you’re targeting vocabulary, grammar, WH-questions, or sequencing, using a summer theme keeps therapy relevant and motivating for students.
Here are some easy-to-implement resources to support your summer language sessions:
These resources make it easy to integrate summer speech therapy activities that are purposeful, low-prep, and adaptable across a variety of language goals and age groups.
With so many engaging summer speech therapy activities to choose from, you can keep your sessions fun, goal-focused, and low prep all season long. Whether you’re planning for ESY, private practice, or just getting ahead on summer themes, these ideas will help you support a wide range of speech and language skills. From books and crafts to sensory play, YouTube videos, and language lessons, there’s something here for every caseload. Don’t forget—you can access even more ready-to-go materials in my TPT store and through the Themed Therapy SLP membership.
What are your favorite summer activities to use in speech therapy? Share in the comments—I’d love to hear what’s working for your students!
