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.
3 Rainbow Speech Therapy Crafts for St. Patrick’s

3 Rainbow Speech Therapy Crafts for St. Patrick’s

by | Feb 22, 2022 | craftivities, Uncategorized

When March hits, it reminds me of spring rainbows and pots of gold for celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. If you are using weather or St. Patrick’s Day theme in March, adding in some easy to adapt St. Patrick’s Day paper crafts to your sessions will make planning therapy easier for you and kids motivated to work on goals! Today, I am going to share 3 Low Prep rainbow crafts you can use with your mixed groups. Amazon affiliate links are provided for your convenience.

Who doesn’t love seeing a rainbow on a clear sunny day after a BIG rain storm?

Amazon affiliate links are provided in this blog post. I receive a small commission for purchases made with my link at no additional cost. 

 

Low Prep St. Patrick’s Day Rainbow Craft

This rainbow craft template is perfect for your speech and language goals because everyone in your mixed group can use it, but have it tailored to their own goals.

For sturdy paper, I recommend using cardstock, but regular paper works well!

Here are some craft supplies you can use with this craft:

Ripped rainbow construction paper

Rainbow dot markers

Rainbow paint (use a paint tool of clothespins and cotton balls) or Tempera paint sticks

Rainbow stamps from Melissa and Doug or rainbow ink pad using fingerprints

Colored Markers

Grab it for FREE HERE.

Click Here to Download the Lucky Rainbow Craft
rainbow-speech-therapy-crafts

Speech Therapy Materials You Can Pair With The Lucky Rainbow Craft

rainbow-speech-therapy-crafts

With this rainbow speech therapy craft, there are templates to cover speech or language goals. Just grab your favorite task cards, word lists, or pictures to use alongside the craft. 

For articulation and phonology goals, I pull out my articulation flipbooks. You can try the /L/ flipbook for FREE! For my students working on carrier phrases, I use these visual sentence strips (there is a No Print version included if you want to pull it up on your iPad.)

If you have students working on vocabulary or grammar, use any picture task cards such as these Education Nouns, Verbs, and Adjective Photo Learning Cards. When using a St. Patrick’s Day theme, you can use verb action cards that are related to the holiday. The St. Patrick’s Grammar and Vocabulary set have LOTS of grammar and vocabulary-related cards and sheets.

Click Here to Download the Lucky Rainbow Craft

St. Patrick’s Day Activities for Speech Therapy

Need some St. Patrick’s Day language activities for your therapy groups? Click the images below to have themed therapy activities to cover a wide range of language goals. 

rainbow-speech-therapy-crafts
Here are three simple St. Patrick's Day paper crafts for speech therapy using rainbows to celebrate the holiday! Make easy rainbow crafts in your speech sessions to increase engagement and practice on goals.

Rainbow Speech Therapy Craft 

When talking about how rainbows form in the sky, this rainbow speech therapy craft could be fun to pair with that lesson! Just use the cloud craft template from my Any Craft Companion Resource, and colored construction paper or rainbow streamers. 

You can also do this with a paper plate cut in half. Add some stretched-out cotton balls to make the cloud “fluffy” and add the streamers. Then, have students write or glue their speech words. Another option is to print pages from the Any Craft Companion Resource on rainbow-colored paper with your student speech or language sounds. 

While making this craft you can target following directions, CORE words for more, help, on, want, look, all done. When making the cotton ball clouds, work on the verbs “stretch,” and “pull.”

Here are three simple St. Patrick's Day paper crafts for speech therapy using rainbows to celebrate the holiday! Make easy rainbow crafts in your speech sessions to increase engagement and practice on goals.

Make a St. Patrick’s Day Rainbow Craft as a Speech Therapy Material

rainbow-speech-therapy-crafts

This rainbow craft may just be something YOU make as a therapy prop for your rainbow or St. Patrick’s Day unit. It’s the perfect themed prop for working on basic concepts.

To read more about how to use this craft as a themed prop, head to this St. Patrick’s Day therapy idea blog post. 

If you need some more rainbow craft ideas for your elementary caseload, check out this craft idea from Speech Room News. 

What Rainbow Speech Therapy Crafts Do You Like to Use in Therapy?

Do you enjoy using a favorite St. Patrick’s Day paper craft with your mixed groups? I am always hunting for low-prep crafts that tie in with this theme. Share about it in the comments, or tag me on social media @thedabblingspeechie when you make a craft.

Some of the best speech therapy sessions happen when you pair a themed book and a craft. Check out this blog post from TLC Talk SLP for books, songs, videos, and activities. 

rainbow-speech-therapy-crafts
Valentine’s Day Craft Speech Therapy Ideas

Valentine’s Day Craft Speech Therapy Ideas

by | Feb 2, 2022 | craftivities

When February hits, you are tired–tired of planning and finding ways to engage your students. Am I right? One way that I keep up engagement in my sessions is by switching things up from time to time. Crafts are one way I can do that! If you have a LOW prep craft that can be adapted for a LOT of different goals, you can keep planning simple. Today, I wanted to share three of my favorite low prep Valentine’s Day crafts for speech therapy!

If you haven’t checked out this blog post with some free Valentine’s Day activities, you’ll want to head there to grab some free Valentine’s Day themed speech therapy activities. It’s my Valentine to you!

This post contains Amazon affiliate links for your convenience. I get a small commission when you click the link with no additional cost to you. 

Free Valentine’s Day Craft for Speech Therapy

For years I have been using this low prep Valentine’s Day craft with my mixed groups. The Love You To Pieces can be used with any goal by writing speech or language targets on the heart. You can also use the articulation or language pictures from the Any Craft Companion to glue on the heart. I will often pair these types of crafts with my articulation activities flipbooks and sound-loaded carrier phrases from my visual sentence strips. Click the pink button below to get your free heart template. 

Get Your Free Valentine’s Day Craft Template
Valentines-day-craft-speech-therapy

If you are on the hunt for more Valentine’s Day themed activities, check out the push-in language lesson plan guides. These are designd for whole class lessons and can also be used in small groups. It makes planning for your K-2 groups easier!

Brittany said, “Loved the google slides, as always, to use on the smart board. my students loved the bingo, as well as the subject (pronoun)+ verb worksheets! I used my own Valentine’s day books with this packet, like The Day it Rained Hearts and Love Monster with my students from 12:1 K-2 class.”

Ways to Use a Valentine’s Day Craft for Speech Therapy

Crafts can be worth the time to prep if you use them strategically in your sessions. Here are some ways you can use Valentine’s Day crafts for speech therapy to get the most bang for your buck:

  • Send them home as the homework assignment
  • Use as a bulletin board to reference every time you enter or leave the speech room as a warm-up or exit activity
  • Plan a co-teaching lesson using the craft as the activity for the day. Work on sequencing and have students initiate with staff and peers to show them their final craft products!
  • Find crafts that relate to the book you are reading or can be adapted for a LOT of different goals

 

Get Your Free Valentine’s Day Craft Template
Valentines-day-craft-speech-therapy

How do you use crafts in speech therapy to target your students’ goals? Share in the comments!

Paper Plate Valentine’s Day Speech Therapy Crafts

love-monster-craft

I am a BIG fan of using paper plate crafts in therapy because it is so cost-effective, and I usually have all the supplies on hand. Here are two Valentine’s Day paper plate crafts:

Make a Love Monster with the following supplies:

paper plates

colored tissue paper

construction paper

You can write or glue your students’ speech or language targets on the back of the plate. Furthermore, students can practice following directions with prepositions and basic concepts while they create their Love Monsters. You can also use this craft to work on story retelling after reading the book, Love Monster by Rachel Bright. You can use my Any Craft Companion Set to have pictures for speech and language targets. 

Heart Friendship Wreath using the following supplies:

Paper plates

String

Colored Hearts from construction paper

This craft pairs well with a friendship-themed book or a Valentine’s Day book that talks about making something for a friend. The Day it Rained Hearts by Felicia Bond pairs well with this activity. Check out this sensory bin for the book HERE. 

You can have students write their speech sound targets, tier II vocabulary words, verb tenses, or love/friendship idioms on the hearts. When working on the concept of compliments or encouraging friends, you can have your students make a wreath for a friend. Have them label and discuss adjectives that describe their friends. Have them write compliments on the hearts of the peers they have in mind.

Get Your Free Valentine’s Day Craft Template
Use these low prep Valentine’s Day crafts for your speech therapy sessions to target multiple goals. Increase engagement and cover your mixed groups with these fun Valentine’s Day crafts for your elementary caseload.

FREE Love Bug Craft for Any Speech Therapy Goal

Need a LOW prep Valentine’s Day craft that will keep little hands busy and minds engaged with their goals? Have students make this FREE Love Bug Craft with dot markers or paint, and use black markers to create a craft while you practice.

You can pull out your speech sound materials or sentence strips while working on a specific sound or pattern.

Another way to adapt this craft is to have students name items in a category or describe a noun by attributes. However many ideas they can name is how many dots they can put on their love bug. You can also do this when drawing the bug’s legs.

free-speech-therapy-crafts-valentines-day

Need More Craft Ideas?

Valentines-day-pre-k-crafts-speech-therapy

Want some more crafts to do this month? Check out this blog post HERE. You will also love this bubble gum and hot air balloon paper plate craft for your sessions! I hope this blog post helps you plan with a little less stress this February!

thedabblingspeechie