Christmas Tree Craft for Speech Therapy

Christmas Tree Craft for Speech Therapy

by | Nov 19, 2022 | craftivities, Themed Speech Therapy, Uncategorized

In December, pulling out some festive activities with your speech therapy groups is fun. If your students celebrate Christmas and need mixed group holiday activities, you will love this Christmas tree craft for speech therapy. It’s easy to make and can be sent home as a functional decor that will remind your students to practice their speech and language skills.

If your students don’t celebrate Christmas, you can adapt this craft to be winter trees.

Amazon affiliate links are included in this blog post for your convenience. When you use my affiliate link, I earn a small commission.

Christmas Tree Craft Supplies You Need

Make mixed group planning easier in December with this Christmas tree craft for speech therapy!

To make this Christmas tree craft for speech therapy sessions, you will need the following supplies:

Cardstock (you can print on regular paper, but it will be a little lighter. For a sturdy tree, the cardstock works best)

Colored pencils or crayons

Dot markers (optional)

Scissors

Glue

String or ribbon if you want to put a hole punch and create an ornament

Christmas tree craft templates

Assembling the Christmas Tree Craft

To make your 3D Christmas tree craft, you must fold each tree in half with the ornament side touching each other. Then, you will add glue to one half of the Christmas tree and glue that to another half of a different tree. Once all sides of your tree are glued together, your Christmas tree craft can stand up independently.

Make mixed group planning easier in December with this Christmas tree craft for speech therapy!

How to Use the Christmas Tree Craft for Speech Therapy

When you print out the templates, you can either pre-cut the trees or have students do it.

Your students can practice their speech and language targets with the printouts in the first session and covering with magnetic chips or erasers on the stimulus items. For ideas using magnetic wands, this post has ideas for you!

Then, in the next session, have students color or use dot markers with their trees. As each child is coloring, you can work on their goals.

After everyone is finished coloring, you can help students assemble their crafts.

You can keep your Christmas trees in your room for warm-up practice or progress monitoring. Plus, you can send it home as homework for students to use for practice until Christmas!

Make a Speech Therapy Bulletin Board with Your Christmas Tree Craft

If you have a bulletin board area in the hallway or your room, you can glue their Christmas tree crafts to colorful construction paper and hang them on the wall.

Or, you can punch a hole at the top of the tree and tie string or ribbon to make an ornament that they can hang on their tree at home.

With the Christmas tree language templates, there are mini homework directions to send home to help parents know how to use the stimulus items at home.

Make mixed group planning easier in December with this Christmas tree craft for speech therapy!

Need more Themed Crafts to Use in Speech Therapy?

Make mixed group planning easier in December with this Christmas tree craft for speech therapy!

Using themed crafts can be a great way to switch things up in your mixed groups when you need a break from worksheets and flashcards.

And themed crafts can help you plan literacy-based lessons for small groups and co-teaching sessions. The Themed Therapy SLP membership provides low-prep-themed crafts and visual supports for those crafts. You can also check out these blog posts for more ideas:

 

Easy Christmas Crafts for Speech Therapy

Ideas for Winter Crafts to Use in Speech Therapy

Easy Summer Crafts for Speech Therapy

Spring Crafts for Speech Therapy

3 Easy Valentine’s Day Crafts for Speech Therapy

Thanksgiving Placemat Craft for Speech

Thanksgiving Placemat Craft for Speech

by | Nov 6, 2022 | craftivities, Uncategorized

It’s November, so it’s time to make a Thanksgiving placemat craft speech therapy style!

Feeling the weight of all those assessments and IEPs, you have to write? I know November can be bananas with paperwork.

When you are overloaded, that usually means NO extra time to plan for therapy sessions.

So, I have a Thanksgiving Placemat Craft speech therapy style you can use with your mixed groups!

Don’t worry; this craft is LOW prep, easily adaptable for LOTS of goals, and something you can send home as homework.

Thanksgiving Placemat Craft Speech Therapy Style!

Easy low prep Thanksgiving placemat craft speech therapy style to use with your mixed groups!
Click Here to Get Your Free Thanksgiving Placemat Craft

To make your Thanksgiving placemat craft, here is what you need:

If you want word lists for a Thanksgiving theme organized by sounds, we have those in the Themed Therapy SLP membership for November.

In the free download, there are a variety of templates so that you can use this craft with lots of goals.

For example,  you can work on naming foods, writing about thankfulness, or gluing words on the plate.

You can grab the full version of this craft in my TPT store if you want ready-to-go templates for different speech and language sounds.

Tips for How to Use Your Craft For More Sessions

After your students finish their crafts, you can laminate them to send home as homework for the Thanksgiving break. Your students can have it at their dinner table to remember to practice their speech or language targets.

Another way to extend the use of this craft is to keep them as warm-ups for collecting data or quick drill. 

Click Here to Get Your Free Thanksgiving Placemat Craft
Easy low prep Thanksgiving placemat craft speech therapy style to use with your mixed groups!

Love Using Crafts in Your Speech Therapy Sessions?

Easy low prep Thanksgiving placemat craft speech therapy style to use with your mixed groups!

If you need some more craft ideas to pair with your fall-themed units, check out this blog post. One of my FAVE crafts to use with most of my caseload is the windsock craft. Check out more about that craft HERE. 

Click Here to Get Your Free Thanksgiving Placemat Craft
Easy Summer Crafts For Speech Therapy

Easy Summer Crafts For Speech Therapy

by | May 21, 2022 | craftivities, Featured #2, Themed Speech Therapy

You either love or hate crafts as an SLP. While I am not a fan of messy crafts that involve glitter and expensive craft supplies, I am down to do crafts that help my students stay engaged. And, if you can use the craft as a functional therapy tool, it’s a go for me! Try these easy summer crafts for your speech therapy sessions when you need to find engaging activities that pair well with a summer-themed book.

The summer crafts in this blog post require minimal supplies that you can afford or hopefully find in your school supply room.

Craft Supplies You Need for Summer Crafts

Here are the things you will need (Amazon affiliate links included for your convenience):

 

Some of the crafts featured in this blog post are from the summer crafts for the speech therapy set.

Beach-Themed Crafts for Speech Therapy

If you are doing a beach theme, make a kid buried in the sand craft! You will have one craft template and can print targets for your speech or language goals. Every student does one craft in your therapy sessions but has targets for practicing their goals.

Easy planning for you and keeps students engaged! And they can take it home for home practice.

Ocean-Animal Crafts for Speech Therapy

There are LOTS of fun low prep ocean animal crafts that you can pair with your favorite books. This craft is fun because you can glue targets on the inside of the craft and then use it to work on basic concepts and with your pretend play activities. For more ocean-themed craft ideas and books to pair with them, check out this blog post. 

Easy summer crafts to use in your speech therapy sessions to cover goals and ideas for how to use as therapy props!

Summer Crafts That Pair Well With The Summer Season

Easy summer speech therapy crafts that will keep your students engaged in the session!

Making a sun with a paper plate or just with construction paper is perfect for summer because it’s hot outside! You can have students glue or write words on the sun rays or on the back of the paper plate.  If you are working on summer weather concepts, you can write activities you can do when it is hot outside. Or, write down things that are hot and cold!

For more ideas for how to use this sun craft, check out the REEL on Instagram.

You can also make a lemonade craft or easy tissue paper or paint crafts for a summer 4th of July BBQ. Check out the pictures below. The lemonade craft is part of the summer crafts for speech therapy resources. And, the watermelon and fireworks low prep crafts are from the summer push-in lesson plan guides. 

S’mores Craft For Speech Therapy

LOTS of kids are eating s’mores over the summer whether they are camping or having backyard firepit hangouts. This is an easy craft to do and pairs well with a camping theme! Need this template? It’s part of the summer craft set. 

Books to Pair With These Summer Crafts for Speech Therapy

Beach Day by Karen Roosa has fantastic pictures! After reading this book, I had my students create a beach theme, and then they got to sprinkle natural sand on their craft with Elmer’s glue. You can read about it HERE!!

A Camping Spree With Mr. Magee by Chris Van Dusen is a great little story about camping. You can read about some of my camping-themed therapy ideas that I did last year.

When a Dragon Moves In by Jodi Moore is a fabulous beach-themed book! You could create a sandcastle or dragon craft with this book!

Alex and The Amazing Lemonade Stand by Liz & Jay Scott look like a fun read! I just ordered it. It would go perfectly with my Ice Cold Lemonade Craftivity.

Easy summer crafts for speech therapy that you can use with mixed groups and your favorite summer books!

What Summer Crafts Do You Love to Use With Your Summer Themed Activities?

What crafts do you love to use for the summer season? If you have one that is easy to prep and engages your students, share it in the comments! As always, tag me on social media @thedabblingspeechie if you use one of these crafts so I can see what you are up to in your speech therapy room. 

3 Ocean Crafts for Speech Therapy

3 Ocean Crafts for Speech Therapy

by | May 11, 2022 | craftivities, Themed Speech Therapy

When you plan a themed therapy unit, one of the best ways to keep the engagement up in your speech therapy session is by pairing a themed book with an extension activity.

An extension activity reinforces or reviews concepts from the theme or book that you just read. So, that can include sensory bins, an informational YouTube video, a game, a writing assignment, task cards, or a craft!

Themed crafts can be an easy way to plan your mixed groups or whole class lessons. Today, I will be sharing three ocean crafts you can use in speech therapy. 

Craft Supplies You Will Need 

Have simple ocean crafts for speech therapy that you can use for whole class instruction or mixed groups!

For these ocean crafts, you need basic supplies, which means it is nice on your wallet! You may find some or all of these things in your school supply room. Amazon affiliate links are included for your convenience.

  • Glue
  • Streamers (Dollar Tree)
  • Paper plates (Dollar Tree)
  • Cardstock
  • Acrylic paint, water color paint, or dot markers
  • Plastic eyes (optional, you can draw in with a marker or cut out with black construction paper)
  • Markers

Ocean Crafts for Speech Therapy That Work on Goals

When it comes to crafts, you want to consider the prep time needed to make the craft. If it isn’t too complex and targets many goals, then the craft is worth the prep.

To make this “Who is hiding in the seaweed?” you print off the template in the ocean language lesson plan guides. Then, print the verb and vocabulary seaweed strips on dark green and light green colored cardstock or white cardstock.

Students can paint their ocean animals with dot markers or watercolors. Then, your students can glue the seaweed pieces to hide their ocean animals. During the craft, you are working on the concepts on/off, colors, turn-taking (only have one glue per table so students can share), and “who” questions. Students can practice the verbs or vocabulary on the seaweed before gluing it on.

You can put it on a bulletin board or send it home for additional practice.

Have simple ocean crafts for speech therapy that you can use for whole class instruction or mixed groups!

Books That Will Pair Well With This Ocean Craft

Have easy to prep ocean crafts for speech therapy to use in your whole class lessons or small groups.

This craft pairs well with the following books:

Way Down Deep in the Deep Blue Sea by Jan Peck 

Commotion in the Ocean by Giles Andreae

Crab Craft To Use in Speech Therapy

This crab craft has a lot of possibilities to be used as a therapy tool after your students create it!

It would help if you had a paper plate, red paint, and construction paper. Print out your ocean images or pictures of your student’s speech words. Have ocean-themed vocabulary words to glue on the inside of the crab included in the ocean language activities unit. Or, you can use the Any Craft Companion to print out speech or language targets.

Your students will paint the plate red and cut out crab legs with red construction paper. Glue the speech or language targets on the inside of the craft. Once the paint is dry, students can use the crab to catch things with their mouth. So, pull out your flashcards and have your students feed the crab the cards after practicing. Or, your students can follow directions with their crabs!

Watch the Crab Craft Tutorial on YouTube

Books the Would Pair Well with the Crab Craft

There are several crab-themed books you can use with this craft. Here is a list of them:

You’re a Crab!: A Moody Day Book by Jenny Whitehead

The Brave Little Crab by Beth Costanza

The Happy Snappy Crab by Tiger Tales

If you want to have visual supports with this craft to use on the SMARTboard or laptop, you can get access to Visual Themed Crafts in the Themed Therapy SLP membership re-opening summer 2022. You can get on the waitlist HERE so you don’t miss any details. 

 

Jellyfish Ocean Craft for Speech Therapy

With this jellyfish craft, you can work on basic concepts and follow directions after you make it!

The blue streamers can help your students understand the verbs “sway’ and “float” while moving the jellyfish craft up, down, high, low, right, left, and around.

Cut a paper plate in half and either paint or glue blue construction paper to the plate. Then, cut out blue streamers to be the jellyfish’s tentacles.

Students can write their speech or language words on the back or use the Any Craft Companion to glue them on the craft.

Books to Pair with This Jellyfish Craft

You can use Commotion in the Ocean by Giles Andreae because it features a jellyfish in the book. If you are looking for some books specifically with jellyfish in the storyline, check out these:

Peanut Butter and Jellyfish by Jarrett J. Krosoczka

I am Not a Fish! by Peter Raymundo

Jellyfish (A Day in the Life: Sea Animals) by Louise Spilsbury

If you are looking for more craft ideas to use in your speech therapy sessions, check out these easy paper plate craft ideas!

Articulation Crafts for Speech Therapy That Get High Trials!

Articulation Crafts for Speech Therapy That Get High Trials!

by | Apr 13, 2022 | articulation, craftivities

When your students start to whine about practicing their speech sounds, it usually means you need to change things up in your speech sessions. But it can be hard to find ways to make it FUNctional for their speech sound goals, right? Today, you will learn how to make some articulation crafts for speech therapy using paper plates that will increase trials and become a therapy tool for your sessions!

Craft Supplies You Need to Make Your Articulation Crafts

You need two paper plates for this craft (use the thin white ones), a glue stick, scissors, markers, and a word list with your student’s speech sounds.

If your students struggle with reading words, you can print out sheets of pictures with their speech sounds. You can use the Any Craft Companion to cover many speech and language goals.

I use the articulation flipbooks for the word lists, as they have word and picture-word lists. You can get the printable version HERE or the NO PRINT version HERE.

For other articulation crafts using paper plates, here are some art supplies to have on hand:

Have a low prep articulation craft for speech therapy that makes getting high trials easy!

Speech Therapy Craft Idea for Any Sound!

First, you will cut slits around one of the paper plates. The plate with the slits will be your top plate.

You will have your students write or glue their speech words around the plate with the bottom plate.

Then, put glue in the middle of the bottom plate. Attach the top plate with the slits to the glue on the base plate.

Your students can then flip the slits to reveal their speech words.

articulation crafts for speech therapy

How to Use Your Articulation Crafts in Speech Therapy

Once your students make their flip-flap speech challenge craft, set a timer for one minute and see how many words they can practice in a minute.

Use the craft as a warm-up each session to review speech sound practice or see if they can beat their previous score.

Instead of writing their speech words on the bottom plate, write different numbers around the plate. Then, write or glue their words on the top flaps. Whatever number you wrote behind the word is the number of times your students must practice their speech words.

Don’t worry about prepping homework because this articulation craft can be sent home as a home program activity for each day!

Need More Ideas for How To Adapt This Speech Therapy Craft for Language Goals?

Would you love to use this articulation craft in your mixed groups? Check out this blog post for how you can use this idea with grammar targets! You could also do this with categories. What other goals could you do this speech therapy craft? Let me know in the comments. 

Articulation crafts for speech therapy

Articulation Crafts Using Paper Plates

Easy prep articulation crafts for speech therapy!

Check out these other low prep articulation crafts you can use to cover your speech sound sessions:

Spring Crafts for Speech Therapy

Spring Crafts for Speech Therapy

by | Apr 11, 2022 | craftivities, Uncategorized

Need some spring craft ideas for your speech therapy sessions? Pairing a craft with one of your favorite spring books can help your students connect with the concepts from the book and increase engagement while practicing skills during the craft activity.

There are several ways that you can use crafts in your therapy session to make the prep work worth it! I will be sharing some easy craft options that are quick prep time. Check out this Real Talk SLP podcast episode to hear more about how you can use craft in your therapy sessions!

Amazon affiliate links included for your convenience.

Supplies You Need for These Spring Speech Therapy Crafts

Flower Crafts for Speech Therapy

During the spring months, flowers start to bloom, and there are a LOT of books about flowers. Two of my favorites for the early elementary crowd are “The Tiny Seed” by Eric Carle and “Planting a Rainbow” by Lois Ehlert.

If you have mixed groups and want to have ONE craft to cover all the goals, check out the Grow a Flower craft that provides different templates for speech and language goals. Specifically, if you want to work on sequencing how a flower grows, this craft is perfect because it has a template talking about the steps with visuals.

Planning a life cycle-themed unit can make themed therapy planning for younger and older students. Check out this blog post with ideas for your elementary speech therapy caseload.

More Low Prep Flower Craft Ideas

One of the easiest crafts to do is printing a spring flower and decorating it with colorful tissue paper squares. It is great for fine motor and makes things easier on you! If you need spring templates for crafts, check out the spring co-teaching language lesson plan guides that include a CORE board to pair with the craft.
Easy spring crafts for speech therapy that will increase engagement in your sessions!
Making crafts with paper plates is cost-effective and fun! If you need visual supports for the step-by-step process when making this flower paper plate craft, that’s a resource included in the Themed Therapy SLP membership. Get on the waitlist for when it opens up in summer 2022. What you will love about paper plate crafts is that you can glue targets on the back of the plate! Use this any craft companion to have targets for these types of crafts.

Spring Crafts to Pair with Your Favorite Books

Pairing insect-themed books with crafts in April is the perfect mash-up. Some of my favorite insect books have great craft activities. For example, the book “In the Tall, Tall Grass” by Denise Fleming pairs perfectly with this grass craft. You only need green construction paper, scissors, glue, and the free printables linked in this blog post!
If you love the books “The Very Lazy Ladybug” by Isobel Finn or The Very Hungry Ladybug by Eric Carle, you can make a paper plate ladybug! The visual story maps for “The Grouchy Ladybug” are included in the insect-themed unit when you join the Themed Therapy SLP membership (it’s opening up again in summer 2022.)

Caterpillar and Butterfly Crafts

There is no shortage of butterfly craft ideas on Pinterest to pair with the book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. A few years ago, in my co-teaching session, we made this fun sponge caterpillar craft to create the main character from the story. You can check out more ideas for this book HERE.
Use fun insect crafts for your next spring themed speech therapy session!

What Crafts Do You Love to Use During the Spring Months?

Easy spring crafts for speech therapy that will make lesson planning easier!
When it comes to crafts, what are your faves for spring? Do you have a favorite book you like to pair the craft with your lessons? I would love it if you shared your book and craft pairings to help inspire other SLPs in planning their sessions.
thedabblingspeechie