Spring Speech and Language Activities Prek-5th

Spring Speech and Language Activities Prek-5th

by | Mar 20, 2023 | Themed Speech Therapy

If you work with preschool through 5th grade, you are gonna love this blog post! Today, I am sharing spring speech and language activities you can use with your entire elementary caseload. This will help you plan more efficiently for your spring speech therapy lesson plans.

Amazon affiliate links are provided for your convenience in this blog post. When you click on a link, I earn a small commission at no additional cost. 

Spring Books for Speech Therapy

Use spring books in your speech therapy sessions

If you love using literacy to cover speech and language goals, here are some of great spring speech therapy books organized by age range:

Prek-1st Grade

 

2nd-3rd Grade

 

4th-5th Grade

Many of these books included have book cheat sheets and visual story maps in the Themed Therapy SLP membership. Sign up for monthly or annual plans; don’t stress about themed therapy planning. You can read more about shared book reading strategies with these spring-themed speech therapy books.

Spring Toys and Games

spring-toys-speech-therapy

During the spring season, bugs are everywhere, and flowers begin to bloom. You can do a spring bug pretend play activity with these bug figurines. Or, you can make a garden dramatic play activity or flower shop dramatic play with items from your local Dollar Tree. Check out this blog post to read more about spring play-based speech therapy activities. There is also a Real Talk SLP podcast episode 81 on play themes for spring too. If you are on the hunt for some spring speech therapy games, here are some fun ones:

 

Spring Songs and YouTube Videos

Using a spring song to get some movement can help kids stay engaged when planning your lessons. Here are a few spring songs that would be fun to use in your push-in or small groups:

 

 

When planning for your upper elementary students, using spring-themed videos can be a low-prep activity that easily covers speech and language goals. Here are some of my fave spring YouTube videos.

 

 

Plan spring speech and language activities for your prek-5th grade caseload!

If you need a FREE Google Slide presentation of all the best spring videos, click the pink button below. 

Get Your Free Spring YouTube Google Slides

Sensory Bins for the Spring Season

 

The Themed Therapy SLP membership also has a spring sensory bin and cheat sheet lesson plan. 

Spring Crafts for Speech Therapy

There are so many great simple crafts for spring! If you want spring-themed crafts with articulation and language targets, check out this How to Grow a Flower craft.

Make in the Tall Tall Grass crafts and pair them with the book! Simply Speech has free printables for this craft. 

You can also check out some other spring speech therapy crafts on this blog post. 

Arty Crafty Kids also has some really easy spring crafts for preschool that would pair well with your books for an engaging small group or whole class lesson!

Receptive and Expressive Language Activities for Younger Students

In spring, talking about flowers and insects is a great theme smash! For SLPs who love the book, In the Tall Tall Grass by Denise Fleming then get this free Tall tall grass digital lesson plan for teletherapy.

 

For more themed therapy ideas to do in spring, this blog post has 5 themes you can use!

Take spring speech and language activities outside, check out this bubbles toy blog post with a free toy companion cheat sheet guide to give you LOTS of articulation and language goals targets.

 

You can take your students outside on an I Spy hunt with their DIY binoculars to make it even more engaging. Make the binoculars first in your session, and then head out for I spy hunts using these free I spy game mats. 

Spring Language Activities for Prek-2nd Grades

If you have a lot of different language goals or need resources for push-in and small groups, check out these spring language activities:

 

Spring Speech and Language Activities for Older Students

When looking for spring speech therapy activities for your older students, consider looking for articles or YouTube videos on their topic of interest that align with this season. For example, you could use a non-fiction article from Wonderopolis on baseball. Or, find a cool science experiment from Mystery Doug like this one about Why Do Birds Lay Eggs in Spring? 

 

Another great way to cover a lot of articulation and language goals is using real photos of spring activities. Search spring photos online or on free sites and add them to a Google Slide. Talk about wh-questions, using their words in a sentence, identifying emotions, perspective taking, inference, and sentence structures. Use the spring inference picture task cards if you don’t have time to search for spring photos! For spring and vocabulary Boom Cards, check out these. 

 

Need short stories with questions that are no prep and use spring vocabulary? Check out this set in my TPT store that is scaffolded for different levels. There are also short stories like this in the themed therapy SLP membership too!

The free Google Slides also organize several spring YouTube videos for older students to address these goals! And we have 4th-5th grade themed activities in the Themed Therapy SLP membership.

Get Your Free Spring YouTube Google Slides
spring-themed-speech-therapy-unit

Using Spring STEM and Science with Older Students

Plan some spring-themed STEM activities to perk your older student’s interests. I love teaching tier II vocabulary and using these activities to give them a practical application of the words. Plus, you can target wh-questions, explain what happened, etc. The Educators Spin on It has a fun plastic eggs stem challenge. 

Stem Education Guide also has some great spring STEM activities that are not too difficult or costly!

Talking about a flower life cycle is a great unit to plan in spring, and I cover all the videos, goals, and activities you can do HERE. 

What Are Your Favorite Spring Speech and Language Therapy Activities?

What are some of your go-to spring speech therapy activities you use with students on your caseload? I would love to know a favorite book, fun DIY activity, game, website or resource you use with your spring-themed activities. Share in the comments or tag me on social media @themedtherapyslp 

EP 93 speech therapy schedule tips for how to get the most out of the day

by | Mar 15, 2023 | Real Talk SLP, Uncategorized

If you have ended your day as a school-based SLP and wondered, “What the heck did I do all day?” you are not alone. Between high caseloads, speech therapy referrals coming in every other day, and trying to see all your students on your speech therapy schedule, it feels like we have NO time left to do all the other caseload management tasks.

In today’s episode of the Real Talk SLP podcast, I am sharing my speech therapy schedule hacks that help me stay focused and productive on the must-dos for the day or week.

By taking about 20 minutes at the end or start of your week to plan out what you will do with your non-therapy time, you will find pockets of time that you can use to get important speech therapy tasks done.

You know, like progress reports, writing IEPs, scheduling meetings, programming AAC devices, planning therapy, assessing students, Medicaid billing, etc.

Here is my affiliate link for Renude! Chaggachino is my favorite new deliciousness to add to my coffee, which is keto-friendly and gives me all the brain energy to crank out work tasks in higher focus mode!

 

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In this Real Talk SLP episode, I share the following:

You will learn tips for how to up your productivity during the work day so that when you leave, the important things on your to-do list will be done. 

With this one small switch in how you view your work week, you won’t get distracted by emails, phone calls, or overbooking yourself and actually have time on your schedule to get stuff done!

How-to use Google Docs to create daily or weekly speech therapy schedules that you can duplicate to adjust your schedule.

Make your copy here of mine HERE. Use this Google Doc for each of your sites. If you are at one site or need a full weekly schedule view make a copy of this Google Sheet. 

Print out your weekly speech therapy schedule after you edit it in Google Docs. I prefer to make a copy of my previous speech schedule and write a new weekly date for digital tracking.

Once I fill it out, I print out the weekly schedule and keep it on a clipboard to take notes when I go around the school. This way, if I didn’t have a computer on me while co-teaching, I could take attendance for Medicaid billing.

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How to Use Zingo in Speech Therapy

How to Use Zingo in Speech Therapy

by | Feb 26, 2023 | Games For Speech Therapy, Uncategorized

When working with students in mixed groups, it’s great to pull out games for speech therapy sessions. We often use board games as a reinforcer for practicing a goal. You know the typical way of rolling the die, practicing their goal, moving their game piece, and then letting the next student take their turn. Sound familiar? That can be super effective for practicing speech and language skills, but what if we could use board games as speech therapy tools? Today, I will share how to use the Zingo game for speech therapy goals. With these easy suggestions, you can turn the game into a Zingo speech therapy activity. 

Where to Find the Zingo Game

zingo-speech-therapy-games

If your students love playing BINGO, they will love the twist of the Zingo game. I found this game at a thrift store, but if you want to avoid hunting around for it, grab it on Amazon (an affiliate link is included for your convenience.) In case you didn’t know, ThinkFun has an expansion pack with new words and cards. 

Using the Zingo 1-2-3 game would be super easy for your students with speech sound goals to get those high trials. Every time your student matches a number on their board, that’s how many times they have to practice their target speech sound. For more high-trial therapy ideas, head to this blog post. 

To help you adapt the game for receptive and expressive language goals and articulation and phonology goals, use the two-page toy companion cheat sheet with the game! It helps save brain energy as you navigate mixed groups with this speech therapy game. 

Zingo Speech Therapy Practice for Z words

It’s a no-brainer that this game has a lot of embedded practice for z words, just with the title alone.

Whenever students find a tile, they can say, “I got a zinger.” or “I can’t wait to yell Zingo!”

You can put the Zingo tiles on the table for a play-based speech therapy activity and have students zoom their cars past the items. They can say “I zoomed past the dog.” Or, you can have a magician zap the tiles to disappear!

You can also create sound-loaded carrier phrases and use the Zingo tiles as the fill-in-the-blank item.

For example, if your student works on r-blends, you can write a sound-loaded sentence such as “Grayson grabs a/an ______.” Use the Zingo tiles to fill in what Grayson grabs.

Use these done for your sound-loaded sentence strips in my TPT store to save you time!

 Rock Chalk Speech Talk shares so great ways to use this game for other sounds and apraxia goals. Check it out HERE. 

zingo-speech-therapy-games

Ideas for Mixed Groups Articulation and Language

Frequently we have mixed groups with articulation and language goals. Here are some ideas for using this game with those types of goals.

Work on yes/no questions for the tiles. For your speech sound students ask them if the object has their speech sound. Use the free yes/no visuals from the Ultimate Articulation Carryover Guide.

Get Your Free Yes/No Visuals

Grab your figurines toys sets like these Little People community helpers and put them on your mats, covering the object. Then, you can ask “who” and “what” questions such as “Who has the duck?” After they find their item, have students describe the item by attributes. You can use this describing poster from the articulation game for describing words. Have younger students look under the figurines to see what they find. You can target CORE words for look, see, under, and what, or build simple sentence structures for “I see _____.”

Get Your Free Yes/No Visuals

Teaching Tier II Vocabulary With the Zingo Speech Therapy Game

Before playing the Zingo game, teach your students some tier II vocabulary words that can be relatable to the game.=

For example, the word reveal means to uncover or to show what is hidden.

With the Zingo game, the game tiles are hidden. When you slide the game handle, it reveals which two tiles are next in the game.

First, have your students complete a personal dictionary sheet with the word reveal. Then, tell them while we play Zingo, we will practice using “reveal” in sentences while playing the game.

Because there is a personal connection to the tier II vocabulary word, students will better understand how to use the word. If you need personal dictionary sheets, these are available in the Themed Therapy SLP membership in the bonus section.

For more tier II vocabulary words to use with the game, reference the Zingo toy companion cheat sheet.

How do you use the Zingo Game in Speech Therapy?

Isn’t it the best when you have many ideas for using one speech therapy game? When we can adapt one board game to cover speech and language goals, it makes planning therapy easier. So, it’s your turn. How do you use the Zingo game with your students? Share your ideas or tips to make this game functional for speech and language goals! Make sure to tag me @thedabblingspeechie if you use Zingo in speech therapy!

To learn about more speech therapy games, head to this blog post. 

articulation-games-for-speech-therapy-zingo
Speech Therapy TH Sound Ideas

Speech Therapy TH Sound Ideas

by | Feb 17, 2023 | articulation

Working on the TH sound in speech can feel challenging. It can be tricky to think of motivating words with the voiced and voiceless TH sounds. These sounds, though, occur so frequently in our language! Just re-read those first three sentences… so many TH sounds! We could have our clients drill reoccurring voiced, and voiceless TH sounds for a whole session, or we can try to find easy ways to spice things up with our therapy. Nothing makes a session drag more than doing boring drills the entire time. So, I’ve compiled some of my favorite resources and engaging speech therapy TH sound activities, and it’s all right here in this blog post!

This blog post contains Amazon affiliate links for your convenience. I receive a small commission at no additional cost to you.

Resources For Speech Therapy TH Sound

The first step, establish the sound in isolation and practice voiced and voiceless TH in syllables. Here are some helpful resources. 

TH Speech Therapy Words Ideas and Activities

Now that your student has established the voiced and voiceless TH sounds, it’s time to start practicing the sounds in words. 

  • One activity I’ve done in the past shows my students two pictures (like cats vs. dogs) and asks them if they like or would rather have “THIS” or “THAT?” Print/write THIS and THAT, place one picture/item below each word, and students can answer THIS or THAT. 
  • Use these TH activities speech therapy digital folders to customize quick drill activities for your in-person and teletherapy sessions. Everything is in one place, including links to websites, YouTube videos, Google Slides, progress monitoring tools, and PDFs.
  • Grab some pipe cleaners, beads, and pipe cleaner articulation for another one of my TH articulation activities. 
  • Print out TH speech word picture cards and use them for I spy games, drills, sensory bins, and more articulation activities that your students enjoy!
  • For kids who need movement or play-based speech therapy activities when working on TH, use this fun game, “throw it” from Home Speech Home.

 

High Trial TH Picture Word Ideas

You can get a TON of trials for your students who need TH picture words using the TH articulation activity flipbooks. There is a printable version which is very engaging because kids go bananas for using dry-erase markers.

Or, you can use it on your iPad or Kami Chrome Extension with the No Print version.

To help kids see how long they have to practice their words, you can set a timer for 1-5 minutes.

I like to do a minute and keep track of their trials with these digital counters. After the minute practice, I can give feedback about productions and show them how many words they practiced.

We can set it again for another minute and follow the same procedure. You can get a lot of buy-in for how easy it can be to practice at home each day for two minutes after they see they can get 25-100 trials in two minutes!

 

 

speech-therapy-for-th-sound

TH Articulation Sentences Level Activities

Now your student is moving on up to sentences with our TH sound! Give these a try.

  • Use this TH sentence activity challenge and send home practice sheets with your student!
  • Use sound-loaded carrier phrases with flashcards, mini trinkets, or word lists. You can pair the I Spy sensory bin with the sound-loaded TH visual sentence strips. 
  • Compare and contrast similar nouns that contain the TH sound. For example, teeth and mouth or toothpaste and toothbrush would be great TH words to compare. If you need pre-selected compare-and-contrast flashcards, check out TH articulation carryover set. 
  • Also included in this carryover set are some Sequencing TH pictures.
  • Use your speech word lists for TH to create carrier phrases. I use Home Speech Home or the themed speech sound word lists from the Themed Therapy SLP membership to find TH word lists. For example, you can write a phrase like, “I went to school with _______.” Then have your student fill in the blank. Use these free TH word list flashcards with this activity.
  • Play a guessing game and use the TH carrier phrase “I am thinking of _______” or “I am thinking of something _____.” You don’t have to use a TH word list by having a sound-loaded TH phrase. You could even play a trivia game, and students are required to answer, “I think the answer is.”

Speech Therapy TH Sound Reading Passages

speech-therapy-th-sound

The key to getting high trials at the reading level is finding stories or passages with reoccurring TH words. Here are some resources you can use: 

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At last, your student’s TH articulation objectives have reached the conversation level. Here are some ideas for you!

  • Search for how-to YouTube videos that contain TH. For example, you can search for “How to wash a thermos?” or “What to do if you have a toothache?” Use those videos to work on speech carryover while answering wh-questions, summarizing, defining vocabulary, and explaining the steps. You can use these pre-selected TH YouTube videos QR task cards in the TH articulation carryover activities set. 
  • Play the game or activity, “What do you think?” Give them a sound-loaded question, show them a funny video or topic, and have them share “What they think.” You can use the Epic or Fail videos from Ellen’s channel to have students predict what they “think” will happen next.
  • Any “Would you Rather?” or “What would you do?” questions are great for sneaking in practice. You can get what would you do question in my TH articulation carryover set or find some fun questions from Erik Raj. 
  • Lastly, incorporate self-monitoring skills using this post.
TH-articulation-progress-monitoring-tool

What TH articulation activities do you plan?

Voiced and voiceless TH sound is one of the most visual sounds to teach. And hopefully, after this post, you’ll feel even more prepared to use motivating and engaging activities with your students. What TH activities do you do? Please share in the comments or tag us on social to share your ideas!

Syllable Level Articulation Visual Cue Sheet

Syllable Level Articulation Visual Cue Sheet

by | Feb 13, 2023 | articulation

We’ve all heard or said, “walk before you run!” As SLPs, we know it’s the same for speech. We learn to say smaller syllables like “sah” or smaller words like “sat” before we say multisyllabic words like “Saturday.” It’s that golden ladder speech sound hierarchy that all SLPs learned and often live by when treating speech delays and articulation disorders. We start by establishing the sound in isolation for our students with speech sound disorders. It might be tricky to decide on syllables or words from there. If we go to syllables, how can we keep our support of our students at this level while also keeping them engaged? My FREE tool, Syllable Level Articulation Activity Worksheet, can help with that. 

Traditional Articulation Therapy Approach Refresh

Following the traditional articulation therapy approach, we move from the smallest unit (a single phoneme) and gradually climb up the speech sound hierarchy. If you remember from grad school, the articulation hierarchy follows this system:

  • Sounds in isolation
  • Syllables
  • Words
  • Phrases 
  • Sentences
  • Reading Paragraphs
  • Conversation
  • Generalization across settings and people

Often, we’ll move right from the isolation level to words. When following the traditional articulation therapy approach, however, we should have the child practice their articulation productions in syllables. By removing the contextualized context, drilling their speech sound in syllables allows the student to focus on the motor patterns. Need more of a refresher on the traditional articulation therapy approach? Check out my blog post about it here.

If you need a visual articulation hierarchy chart, check this free one out from Allison Fors.

Where to Start With Articulation Therapy

Before grabbing the worksheet, you’ll need to determine where to start with your student. The best way to decide where to begin in therapy is to complete baseline testing about where the child is correctly producing the sound. The SLP can determine if the child can discriminate a correct versus incorrect sound production. Then, the SLP can assess if the sound is stimulable in isolation, syllables, words, and so forth. Once you’ve determined their baseline, it’s time to help them climb that ladder!

 

The Syllable Level Articulation Activity worksheet helps both our students and us. We can quickly plan for sessions with little to no prep. Grab the worksheet and

 Amazon affiliate links are provided for your convenience. 

The worksheet helps provide a visual for students while they focus on the motor patterns with their new sound attached to short, long, or mixed vowels in CV or VC syllables.

Tips for Using the Syllable Level Articulation Sheet

Practicing syllables may seem “boring” or even “weird” to some students, but it’s an important step. Explain to your students that these are the building blocks for words. I once had a parent question why I practiced such simple words in therapy with their child. I took the time to explain that practicing their child’s speech sound in syllables would later prepare them for correct productions in multisyllabic words. For example, working on final /s/ syllables such as “ace” could help produce this syllable in acid, baseball, asymmetrical, racing, and replace. After, she was more open and appreciative of the CV and VC words. A few weeks later, she could hear these CV and VC syllables in longer words. Some of our students (or their parents or teachers) might need this explanation, too! For younger students, you should tell them that you’ll be practicing silly nonsense words during the session.

Once you’ve explained your goal for the activity, it’s time to practice. You can pull out the worksheet for drilled practice before between turns in a game or craft. Cycle through each vowel before your student takes a turn. You could also have them repeat one vowel per turn. The choice is yours!

syllable-level-articulation-activities-free-printable

Additional Articulation Activity Ideas To Do With the Sheet

syllable-level-articulation-activities

If you’re doing more play-based therapy, brainstorm the syllables that might come up during play or that you want to use during the activity. Many of these CV or VC syllables are words that we use daily. For example:

  • Make a car GO. Put a GUY in the car. “Oh no, the car is covered in GOO!”
  • Do you SEE that dino? It is SO cool. What does the dino SAY? The dino’s name is SUE.
  • The dolls are IN the house. Oh NO, the cat is stuck ON the roof. NAH, we can get it down. Ouch! The doll fell on her KNEE. Look, here’s a NEW band-aid to help. Now she’s hungry and needs AN apple.
  • Create silly names for the characters (dolls, dinosaurs, animals, monsters, etc.) you’re using. My dino’s name is SAH! or This animal is POH!

Ensure your worksheet is handy to help your student practice these syllables during play. When the worksheet is out during play, it allows your students to shift their attention to practice and provides a visual.

 

Strategies for Incorporating Self Awareness

Have the child rate their productions with visual supports. You can record your student producing their syllables and then have the student listen to the recording. The student can say or write down the words they said correctly or incorrectly.

Make sure your positive and negative feedback is clear and specific. For example, you can say, “That was a perfect L.” or “Oops, our tongue wasn’t in the right position, so I didn’t hear an L sound.”

Have your students visually see their performance at the end of the session by graphing how well they did or explaining which words they produced correctly.

Once they’ve mastered this syllable level, it’s time for words with their target sound!

Check out the printable and no-print articulation flipbooks if you need articulation word lists. They have word, phrase, and sentence-level practice. 

 

Sticking At The Syllable Level A Little Longer

Practicing at the syllable level provides our practice students with these essential building blocks to larger words. They can focus their energy on the motor plan for their new sounds. Planning sessions around such small syllables can be challenging. Still, the Syllable Level Articulation Activity Worksheet can help give students a visual when practicing during games, a craft, play, or more! How do you practice the syllable level of the Traditional Articulation Therapy Approach? Share your activities and tips in the comments!

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