CYBER SALE! ➔
Eating ice cream on a hot summer day is something that many of your students experience during summer break! That’s why it is a great theme to plan during the summer months.
Whether you need quick, low-prep digital activities or hands-on ice cream preschool activities for speech therapy, this blog post will share engaging ideas for your speech therapy sessions. Plus, planning an ice cream speech therapy theme can make lesson planning easier for mixed groups because you can easily adapt activities for language, social communication, play skills, and speech sounds.
Your speech therapy lessons will always be more engaging if you find ways to make them hands-on. Use ice cream playdough mats for an easy-to-prep activity covering many speech and language goals. The mats pictured are from the ice cream push-in lesson plan guides. Here are some ideas for using the playdough mats:
-Following directions
-Commenting, requesting, and describing by attributes
-Reinforcer for any goal, or they can earn playdough or decoration after practicing their sounds
-Demonstrate basic concepts for the middle, bottom, on top, on, off
-Sequencing the steps for making an ice cream cone
Create an ice cream sensory bin using this kinetic sand set from Lakeshore Learning, or add white cotton balls, cups, an ice cream scoop, colorful mini pom balls, or cut-up rainbow straws.
While exploring the sensory bin, students can practice requesting items, following directions, describing textures, answering WH-questions, sorting by color or category, and using core vocabulary words such as more, help, want, turn, and different. You can also hide picture cards or small objects in the sensory bin to work on speech sounds, vocabulary, and language concepts during play.
Using a theme-based approach across your entire elementary caseload can help you plan therapy more efficiently. But it can become time-consuming to hunt down enough activities to cover preschool through 5th grade. Because I don’t want time to be the reason you don’t use themes to serve your students, I created a Themed Therapy SLP membership to take themed therapy planning off your plate. When you sign up for the membership, you get access to three monthly themes that have everything you need to cover speech and language goals on your caseload.
Here are some activities included in each themed unit:
You can plan a real ice cream party with your students, which can be great for targeting WH-questions, social communication, and language skills. As a whole-class lesson, students can help plan all the details before the party and then work on speech and language goals during the ice cream party in the next session.
Planning the party provides opportunities to practice making choices, voting on favorite flavors, creating a guest list, discussing what supplies are needed, and sequencing the steps for setting up the event. These activities naturally target vocabulary, problem-solving, conversation skills, and perspective-taking.
If you don’t have the budget to host a real ice cream party, use a pretend-play set and invite your students’ favorite stuffies and characters to one. Or, take a trip to an imaginary ice cream shop! I love the Melissa & Doug ice cream sets, but there are many pretend play ice cream sets available (Amazon affiliate links are included for your convenience).
During pretend play, students can practice requesting, commenting, answering WH-questions, following directions, turn-taking, and social communication skills. You can also target speech sounds naturally by having students order flavors, describe toppings, and talk about their favorite ice cream treats.
If you don’t want to stress about what to plan for the ice cream party, use my root beer float speech therapy unit. It has activities for sequencing, articulation, end-of-the-year awards, vocabulary, and more!
Ice cream toy sets are one of my favorite materials for preschool speech therapy because they can be used across multiple sessions while targeting a variety of speech and language goals. Whether you’re working on requesting, social communication, vocabulary, play skills, or speech sounds, an ice cream toy set can easily be adapted for your students’ needs.
Best Ice Cream Toy Sets for Play-Based Speech Therapy:
Once you have an ice cream toy set, there are countless ways to use it during play-based speech therapy sessions. I love using pretend play because it creates natural opportunities to target speech sounds, vocabulary, social communication, and language skills while keeping students engaged.
Here are some of my favorite ways to use an ice cream toy set in speech therapy:
If you love using toys in speech therapy but struggle to remember what goals to target, my Toy Companion Cheat Sheet Guide can help! The guide includes stimulus targets and therapy ideas for 45 toys, along with a two-page companion specifically designed for an ice cream toy set.
You’ll find ideas for targeting WH-questions, Tier II vocabulary, articulation, basic concepts, adjectives, and social communication skills. When planning time is limited, these cheat sheets make it easy to grab a toy and start therapy with confidence.
Whether you are providing in-person therapy, teletherapy, or push-in services, digital apps and activities can help increase engagement while keeping therapy low prep.
ABCya and the My Ice Cream Maker app are great for teaching sequencing and vocabulary while making an ice cream cone. You can also target a variety of speech and language skills with one activity, including:
Sago Mini has a fun fair app that features an ice cream cart where students can create their own ice cream flavors. This activity works well for requesting, commenting, describing, and practicing turn-taking during play.
One of my favorite things about digital activities is that you can easily adapt them for mixed speech therapy groups. While one student practices speech sounds, another can work on vocabulary, describing, sequencing, or answering WH-questions using the same activity. This makes planning easier while still targeting each student’s individual goals.
Research has shown that building a broad range of language skills supports later reading comprehension. That is why I love using activities that let students practice vocabulary, grammar, listening comprehension, and conversation all in one engaging ice cream-themed activity.
Ice cream themes are highly motivating for preschoolers because they connect to real-life experiences that many students have had with their families. This familiarity helps students participate in conversations, share personal experiences, learn new vocabulary, and engage in pretend play activities. Whether you are targeting speech sounds, social communication, play skills, or language development, an ice cream theme provides meaningful opportunities for learning through play.
Ice cream isn’t the only summer theme that works well for preschool speech therapy! Using seasonal themes can make lesson planning easier while helping students build vocabulary, social communication, play skills, and early language concepts.
If you’re looking for more summer-themed speech therapy ideas, check out these related resources:
Whether you’re planning therapy for mixed groups, preschool classrooms, or individual sessions, summer themes can help keep students engaged while targeting a variety of speech and language goals.
What are your favorite ice cream preschool activities for speech therapy? Share your ideas in the comments below!
Research articles:
Lervåg, A. , Hulme, C. and Melby‐Lervåg, M. (2017). Unpicking the developmental relationship between oral language skills and reading comprehension: It’s simple, but complex. Child Development. Advance online publication. doi:10.1111/cdev.12861
Hadley, E. B., Dickinson, D. K., Hirsch-Pasek, K., & Golinkoff, R. M. (2018). Building semantic networks: The impact of a vocabulary intervention on preschoolers’ depth of word knowledge. Reading Research Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.225
