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I love using themes in my speech therapy room, and winter is one of the best seasons for building your therapy material stash. One reason winter works so well is that it can be used across preschool and elementary grade levels, making it easy to plan for a wide range of students.
In this blog post, I’m sharing a ton of winter speech therapy activities to make lesson planning simple. You won’t need to scroll Pinterest for hours looking for winter-themed speech and language activities—everything you need for preschool through 5th grade is in one place.
This post was originally published in 2015 and has been fully updated with new winter-themed books, toy recommendations, and speech therapy materials. Some links in this post are Amazon affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you.
These winter speech therapy activities are best for preschool through 5th grade students. If you’re looking for middle school ideas, check out this winter speech therapy activities post instead.
Using winter-themed books in literacy-based speech therapy makes it easier to target vocabulary, comprehension, sentence structure, and narrative skills. To help you quickly choose books that match your caseload, here are winter speech therapy books organized by grade level, along with suggested focus areas.
The Snowy Day Ezra Jack Keats – Great for sequencing events, winter vocabulary, and answering who/what/where questions.
Let it Snow by Maryann Cocca-Leffler -Perfect for discussing changes in weather, winter vocabulary, describing actions, and making simple predictions.
The Jacket I Wear in the Snow by Shirely Neitzel – Ideal for targeting winter clothing vocabulary, sentence expansion, and repetitive language structures.
Immi’s Gift by Karin Littlewood – Supports inferencing, has story elements, character emotions, and comparing winter environments.
Lemonade in Winter by Emily Jenkins – Great for problem-solving, sequencing, narrative structures, and discussing cause and effect.
Snow by Uri Shulvitz – Excellent for predicting, describing sensory details, and discussing point of view.
The Mitten by Jan Brett – Perfect for story retell, sequencing, predicting outcomes, and discussing character motivations.
Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett – Useful for comparing stories, comprehension and story retell, and targeting expressive language skills.
Snow Day by Lester L. Laminack – Great for perspective-taking, narrative structure, and personal connections.
If you work with students in self-contained classrooms and are trying to find winter speech therapy books that fit goals for functional communication and account for attention span, repetitive text, etc, head to episode 64 of the Real Talk SLP podcast to get my top book recommendations for SDC classrooms. Now let’s chat about winter activities for speech therapy that will pair perfectly with these book suggestions!
Doing a snowman theme has so many winter speech therapy activities for your Prek-5th caseload. So, if you are looking for snowman-themed books to use with your speech therapy groups, you can get great recommendations on my blog post.
If you need winter picture scenes for your speech therapy sessions, grab this free printable set designed for preschool and elementary students. You can use these winter picture scenes to:
These visuals are flexible, low-prep, and easy to adapt for mixed groups or literacy-based speech therapy lessons. I love winter speech therapy activities that can be used to cover ALL the goals on my caseload.
Winter sensory bins for speech therapy are a hands-on way to extend winter books and keep preschool and elementary students engaged. Sensory bins work especially well as a follow-up or story retell activity after reading a winter-themed book, such as The Mitten.
To create a winter sensory bin, start with a snow-like filler such as fake snow, white pom-pom balls, cotton balls, salt, sugar, or shredded white paper. Then add winter-themed figurines—like penguins or woodland animals preparing for winter. These can support story telling and verb actions within the context of the winter book you read!You can boost language skills by including vocabulary printables and playing simple games like “Can you find it?” to target inferencing, receptive language, and categories. Winter speech therapy sensory bins are easy to adapt for articulation, vocabulary, sentence expansion, and story retell, making them a flexible, low-prep option for mixed groups.
Winter speech therapy activities that have a hands-on approach increase engagement while also meaningfully working on goals. Winter sensory bins do all that!
Having open-ended games for mixed groups makes lesson planning much easier, especially during the winter months. These winter speech therapy games work well for articulation and language goals because they allow you to adapt prompts, target different skills, and keep students engaged without extra prep.
Here are some of my favorite winter activities for speech therapy that work well as reinforcers for mixed groups:
If you have students that enjoy movement breaks check out this snowflake hop gross motor activity from Pink Oatmeal.
Join the Themed Therapy SLP membership if you need winter-themed speech and language materials for your Prek-5th grade caseload. Instead of hunting around the internet for hours planning your themed units, you can let the membership do the work for you! When you join, you get various printable materials, book cheat sheets, Google Slides, toy cheat sheets, lesson plan cheat sheets, speech sound word lists, articulation flashcards, crafts and more!
When planning winter speech therapy activities, using winter toys for speech therapy can help bring concepts to life and increase student engagement. Toys, games, and themed props are a great alternative to worksheets and work well for preschool and elementary students.
Here are a few easy ways to use winter-themed toys and props in speech therapy:
Adding winter-themed games to your therapy stash can be great for mixed groups. Many games can be adapted across articulation and language goals by reusing the pieces. Disney Frozen Frantic Forest works well for mixed groups and games like Don’t Break the Ice and Thin Ice are great winter-themed options. If you need a game companion cheat sheet for Don’t break the ice, there is one in the toy companions.
If you’re looking for winter activities for speech therapy that support high articulation drill practice, winter-themed props make it easy to keep students motivated while getting lots of repetitions. These winter articulation activities work well for preschool and elementary students and can be easily adapted for mixed groups.
Here are a few simple, low-prep ideas for winter articulation drill practice:
And, if you love Sneezy the Snowman, you will love these no-prep articulation worksheets for word and sentence practice available on TPT and my shop. Plus, we also provide winter articulation flashcards, winter speech sound word lists and open-ended games in December on the monthly Themed Therapy SLP membership. If you get the annual subscription, you have access to over 30 themed units all year long.
There are so many engaging winter speech therapy activities you can plan for preschool and early elementary students. Seasonal themes work especially well for younger learners because they provide concrete visuals, predictable routines, and meaningful vocabulary.
To support language development during winter-themed speech therapy sessions, try these activities with your caseload:
Get high trials for articulation and phonology with winter props and activities. You can use winter picture scenes to cover speech and language goals, or my free winter picture speech therapy scenes. Think of sound-loaded phrases with your students target speech sound to use when describing the people and items in the photo.
Winter crafts can be a powerful way to support speech and language goals when used intentionally. Crafts help preschool and elementary students practice following directions, sequencing, vocabulary, and expressive language during speech therapy sessions.
If you’re looking for hands-on winter crafts for speech therapy, I’ve put together a separate post filled with winter speech and language craft ideas you can use all season long. You’ll find low-prep crafts that pair well with books, picture scenes, and literacy-based speech therapy activities.
Research shows that students with language impairments need 36 meaningful exposures to a vocabulary word before it is truly learned (Storkel et al., 2016). That means winter-themed speech therapy doesn’t need to last just one week—you can confidently use a winter theme for 2–4 weeks, especially when working on vocabulary goals.
Using a longer winter theme allows students to engage with vocabulary repeatedly across books, picture scenes, real photos, and hands-on activities. You can focus on winter vocabulary, multiple meaning words, and Tier II vocabulary from winter books to help build deeper word knowledge.
These winter vocabulary activities work well with real photos, picture scenes, and illustrations from winter books:
Compare and contrast winter nouns by shared features (for example: coat vs. jacket, sled vs. snowboard). We use winter compare-and-contrast cards from this resource.
Build background knowledge using a word association graphic organizer to talk about winter weather, clothing, activities, and foods. A winter-themed graphic organizer is included in the Winter Google Slides inside the Themed Therapy SLP Membership.
Teach multiple meaning words using winter contexts (see word list below).
Teach shades of meaning by comparing winter-related synonyms (see list below).
Target verbs, grammar, and morphology using a winter picture scene:
Sort winter vocabulary into categories, such as:
snow, coat, jacket, mittens, gloves, scarf, hat, boots, sled, snowman, snowflake, penguin, ice, icicle, cocoa, fireplace
shovel, slide, skate, sled, freeze, melt, slip, bundle, wear, build, throw, catch
cold, icy, slippery, wet, warm, heavy, fluffy, frozen, snowy, windy
Cold → cool → chilly → freezing
Snowing → flurrying → snowing → blizzarding
Walk → step → trudge → stomp
Big → large → huge → enormous
What winter speech therapy activities do you enjoy planning for your students? I always love hearing how other SLPs use seasonal themes to support articulation and language goals in speech therapy.
Do you have a favorite winter book, website, or activity that you use year after year? Share your go-to winter activities for speech therapy in the comments below. I’m always looking to learn from other SLPs and add new ideas to my therapy toolbox.
