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Need low-prep summer speech therapy ideas that still keep your students engaged? YouTube videos can be a powerful tool for planning articulation and language lessons while making sessions feel fun and interactive. Whether you’re providing ESY services, working with mixed groups, supporting teletherapy students, or planning summer sessions for preschool through elementary students, themed videos can help target a variety of speech and language goals.
In this post, I’m sharing my favorite summer speech therapy ideas using YouTube videos. You’ll find summer-themed movement breaks, wordless videos for inferencing and social communication, read-alouds, and informational videos that support vocabulary, comprehension, and language development. These video-based activities are easy to use for mixed-group lesson planning or to enhance engagement with your push-in services.
To make planning easier, you can also grab my free Summer Speech Therapy YouTube Google Slides™ resource with categorized video links ready to use in your sessions. It’s a simple way to organize your favorite summer videos for speech therapy and save planning time all season long.
YouTube videos can be a simple way to make summer speech therapy sessions more engaging while also reducing planning time for busy SLPs. Instead of planning multiple activities for mixed groups, you can use one themed video and adapt it for different speech and language goals. A single summer video can support articulation carryover, vocabulary development, narratives, comprehension, grammar, inferencing, and social communication skills.
Videos are also helpful because they pair visuals with audio, making it easier for students to understand new concepts and stay engaged during therapy sessions. For older students, informational videos can help break down more complex summer topics while giving opportunities for discussion, summarizing, and extension activities. During co-teaching or push-in lessons, movement videos and songs can also be an easy way to incorporate brain breaks and whole-group participation.
Another reason I love using YouTube videos in summer speech therapy is that they are free and flexible. They don’t need to become the entire lesson plan. Instead, videos can enhance your summer themes, build background knowledge, and create meaningful opportunities for conversation and language practice.
Summer science and nature videos are a great way to build background knowledge while targeting vocabulary, listening comprehension, complex grammar structures, inferencing, and narrative skills. These informational videos work especially well for mixed speech therapy groups because you can adapt the same material for a variety of goals. Younger students can work on identifying seasonal vocabulary and answering WH-questions, while older students can practice summarizing information, explaining concepts, and using new vocabulary in conversation.
One of my favorite summer speech therapy ideas is using informational videos from channels like Crash Course Kids to introduce summer-related concepts such as the sun, seasons, weather, and ocean life. The videos are short enough to keep students engaged during 20–30 minute sessions while still providing plenty of opportunities for discussion and extension activities.
For example, this video about the sun and seasons includes engaging visuals and simple explanations that help students better understand seasonal changes and summer weather concepts. You can pause throughout the video to ask prediction questions, review vocabulary, or have students retell information using complete sentences. Or upload the video to EdPuzzle and add stimulus items throughout, and automatically pause the video for you.
SciShow Kids also has great videos related to summer concepts, such as “Why should you wear sunscreen? This creates opportunities to discuss science and language concepts while building background knowledge about sunscreen and protecting your skin.
Use these videos to target sequencing, seasonal vocabulary, inferencing, and comprehension questions.
Perfect for discussing problem-solving, social pragmatics, and summer safety concepts.
Grab the free Summer Speech Therapy YouTube Google Slides™ resource with categorized video links ready to use in your sessions. The videos are organized by theme and goal area, making it easier to plan mixed-group speech therapy lessons, teletherapy sessions, and ESY activities.
After watching the video, use these extension activities to target additional speech and language goals:
Simon’s Cat summer-themed videos are a fun and engaging way to target inferencing and social communication skills in speech therapy. Because the videos are wordless, students must rely on facial expressions, body language, and visual context clues to understand what is happening in the story. This creates meaningful opportunities to practice critical thinking, perspective taking, and predicting what characters may do next.
I like using these short animated clips to help students identify emotions, explain character motivations, and discuss how problems are solved throughout the video. We often pause the videos to talk about what the characters might be thinking or feeling and support students in using complete sentences to explain their ideas.
These videos also work well for mixed speech therapy groups because they can easily be adapted for different goals. Students can practice articulation carryover while retelling events, work on narrative skills by sequencing the story, or target social pragmatics by discussing expected and unexpected behaviors.
If you want more ideas for using Simon’s Cat videos in speech therapy, check out my full Simon’s Cat speech therapy blog post. I also created Simon’s Cat Summer Speech Therapy Cheat Sheets with no-prep articulation, language, and social communication activities designed specifically for these videos.
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To make planning even easier, I included my favorite summer-themed Simon’s Cat wordless shorts inside the free Summer Speech Therapy YouTube Google Slides™ resource. The videos are already organized and linked for quick access during mixed groups, teletherapy, ESY, or push-in speech therapy sessions.
Here are a few easy ways to use wordless videos in speech therapy sessions:
Summer read-aloud videos can be an easy way to incorporate literacy into your speech therapy sessions while keeping planning simple. I love pairing summer-themed books with articulation, vocabulary, grammar, and narrative language activities because one story can naturally target a variety of goals for mixed groups.
YouTube read-alouds are also helpful for home carryover, teletherapy, or push-in lessons when you want quick access to themed books without needing to bring multiple materials to each session. Many summer-themed stories include rich vocabulary, repetitive sentence structures, and opportunities to target WH-questions, sequencing, inference, and story-re-telling skills.
For a more interactive experience, pause the read-aloud throughout the story to ask prediction questions, discuss character feelings, or practice retelling events using complete sentences. You can also pair the videos with extension activities such as graphic organizers, articulation carryover practice, or summer-themed crafts.
And, if you are on a budget and can’t buy books, having a YouTube read-aloud option is great! Some of my favorite summer read-aloud themes include beach days, camping, ocean animals, summer, and ice cream. Inside the Themed Therapy SLP membership, we provide book companions and cheat sheets with speech and language goals already planned for a variety of summer books and themes.
Summer songs and movement videos are an easy way to keep students engaged during speech therapy sessions while incorporating opportunities for language development and social interaction. I love using these videos during whole-group lessons, push-in therapy, ESY, or mixed groups because they help students reset their attention and stay actively involved in the session.
Movement breaks can also support speech and language goals beyond just keeping students engaged. Younger students can practice imitation, requesting, following directions, and identifying summer vocabulary during songs and action videos. Older students can work on sequencing, describing actions, and discussing summer-related concepts while participating in movement activities.
These summer brain break videos work especially well between articulation drills, literacy activities, or language tasks when students need a quick reset before transitioning to the next activity. Don’t forget to check out the Frozen summer songs featuring Olaf—those are always a favorite with younger students!If you want all my favorite summer songs and movement videos already organized for easy planning, grab the free Summer Speech Therapy YouTube Google Slides™ resource linked below.
One of the easiest ways to streamline summer speech therapy planning is by organizing your favorite YouTube videos inside Google Slides™ or PowerPoint presentations. Having all your summer videos linked in one place makes it easier to quickly transition between activities during mixed groups, teletherapy sessions, push-in lessons, or ESY services.
I personally love using Google Slides because I can organize videos by theme, goal area, or activity type. For example, I may create sections for movement breaks, summer science videos, wordless inferencing clips, and read alouds. This makes it easy to reuse the same materials year after year while adapting activities for different students and speech or language goals.
Organizing videos ahead of time also reduces planning fatigue because you don’t have to search YouTube during your sessions. Instead, you can quickly pull up the exact video you need and spend more time focusing on student engagement and therapy goals.
If you’d like a done-for-you option, grab my free Summer Speech Therapy YouTube Google Slides™ resource with categorized video links already organized for easy lesson planning.
You can also check out my summer-themed language lesson plan guides, which include ready-to-use Google Slides™ presentations paired with articulation and language activities. In the Themed Therapy SLP membership, we also have grade level themed Google Slides with links to songs, book read alouds, and videos to make planning easier!
You don’t need dozens of complicated activities to create engaging summer speech therapy sessions. Using themed YouTube videos can help you quickly introduce vocabulary, build background knowledge, target articulation and language goals, and keep students motivated throughout the summer months. Whether you’re planning ESY sessions, mixed groups, push-in lessons, or teletherapy activities, videos can be an easy way to make therapy more interactive while reducing planning time.
One of my favorite parts about using videos in speech therapy is how flexible they are. The same summer video can support articulation carryover, inferencing, grammar, narrative language, comprehension, social communication, and vocabulary goals depending on your students’ needs.
If you want all my favorite summer speech therapy YouTube videos organized and linked for easy lesson planning, don’t forget to grab the free Summer Speech Therapy YouTube Google Slides™ resource.
What are your favorite summer YouTube videos for speech therapy? Share them in the comments so we can all add new ideas to our therapy toolbox!
