
Engaging Ice Cream Speech Therapy Activities
During the summer months, planning an ice cream speech therapy unit for your elementary caseload is the BEST! There are lots of ways to adapt this theme for younger and older students. You won’t regret planning ice cream activities because your students will stay engaged while they practice their speech and language. I mean, what kid doesn’t love talking about ice cream? It’s seriously the best summer treat.
Ice Cream Activities with Toy Sets & Dramatic Play

If you are working with preschool through 2nd grade, investing in a pretend play ice cream toy set is worth it! I got the Melissa and Doug ice cream toy set, and LOTS of my 4th-5th graders begged me to play with it when they saw it from a previous speech session.
You can target many speech and language goals using a play-based speech therapy approach with an ice cream toy set.
Here are a few recommendations for an ice cream set:
- Melissa and Doug Ice Cream Toy Set is sturdy and detailed but slightly pricey. It’s great for a dramatic play ice cream shop set up where you can work on turn-taking, social communication for getting ice cream, describing, asking, and answering wh-questions
- Play Circle by Batatt Sweet Treats Ice Cream is more affordable and perfect for a sundae party.
You can turn your speech room into an extra cool therapy space and make a dramatic play ice cream shop. Get more preschool ice cream speech therapy activities for easy planning.
Ice Cream Speech Therapy Activities You Can Eat
Teach your students science and cover speech therapy goals while making ice cream in a bag! Your students will be engaged to learn because, in the end, they get to taste a yummy ice cream treat that they made.
To learn more about how to make the ice cream in the bag, here is a recipe. Plus, you can use the SciShow Video to discuss the process, answer wh-questions, and teach tier II vocabulary words such as crave, flavor, measure, or melt.
For articulation and phonology goals, you can have students use challenge words or phrases with their sound, such as “flavor” for l-blends or R, “three, ice cream, ingredients, and cream” for r-blends, “shake” for SH or “salt” for s.
Because you have to use different-sized bags, you can target big/little as well as vocabulary for cooking!
When targeting language goals, you can work on sequencing the steps for making the ice cream focusing on transition words, verbs, sentence structure, and vocabulary. If you need visual supports for this activity, my ice cream push-in language unit has some!
If you need some visual recipes for ice cream in a bag or milkshakes, Live Love Speech has a great set for your push-in whole-class lessons or small groups.

Ice Cream Speech Therapy Sensory Bins

Work on verbs such as scoop, sprinkle, eat, give, and melt with an ice cream sensory bin. To make your sensory bin, you can use the kinetic sand kit from Lakeshore Learning or add the following to your container (Amazon affiliate links are included):
- White pom pom balls or white cotton balls
- Cones and cups from this play set, or use what you have at home
- Ice cream scoop or spoon
- Cut up multi-colored straws or pipe cleaners for sprinkles
- Optional – Tissue paper for sauce
- Optional – ice cream erasers for filler in the bin
- Optional – rainbow pom pom balls for different flavors
You can incorporate the following basic concepts:
- big/little
- more/less
- full/empty
- in/out
- hot/cold
- colors
- first/last
- open/close
Think about the goals on your caseload and come up with a little cheat sheet list of words or concepts you can target while playing with the bin!
Ice Cream Sequencing Activities for Language Goals
Sequencing the steps for making ice cream in a bag, creating an ice cream sundae, or root beer float is a great way to incorporate a variety of language goals such as sentence structure, transition words, vocabulary, answering wh-questions, morphology, and speech sounds in sentences. Use the Ice Cream Sequencing Boom Cards and sequencing short stories from the Themed Therapy Membership to cover goals easily!

Ice Cream Lesson Plan With STEAM 3D Shapes

Anytime you can do an easy hands-on activity to cover speech and language goals, you should do it! Kids are way more engaged when they have something they can create. This STEAM 3D ice cream lesson plan can help you cover 2D and 3D shapes but also target lots more skills. You can get all the printables for FREE and target tier II vocabulary for predicting, adjusting, formulating, and hypothesizing.
Naturally, practice adding suffixes for ‘est’ to discuss the weakest or strongest spheres. Make a list of words to target while doing the activity with your student’s speech sound. And use the 3D cone to fill with pom pom balls for every production. How else could you use this 3D shapes ice cream lesson plan with your caseload? Let me know in the comments.
What Ice Cream Activities Do You Plan With Your Caseload?
If you have a website, activity, or resource you love using with your ice cream speech therapy lesson plans, let me know in the comments. Sharing what you are doing with your students gives SLPs ideas for what they can do too! Loving an ice cream theme and want to save time planning? Check out this list on Amazon (affiliate links) of ice cream books, activities, games, and props to make your ice cream speech therapy lesson planning easier!
