Actions Fast No Prep Speech Therapy Activity

Ever need a no prep, EASY activity that is fun and targets a ton of skills at once (including past tense!)? Of course you do!

Here is one of my favorite last minute activities that targets verbs (especially past tense verbs), sequencing, articulation, and sentence formulation! All with no materials!

 

I like to call this game “Actions FAST!!”. First, I tell my kiddos that I am about to set a timer for 1 minute (or 30 seconds, or 10 seconds, or whatever you’d like) and that they will be need to be super speedy! I challenge them to run around and do 3-5 crazy things in the room with the catch that they really need to work hard to remember everything they do, IN ORDER. The first time we do this, I don’t give much more information than that.

I set the timer and yell, “GO!!”.

I cheer them on as they run around the room and do super random activities (jumping, yelling, kicking, writing, running, etc…). When the timer beeps, I have them run as fast as they can to a designated place in the room where we debrief. Then, they have to walk me through what they did, in order, using the actions in the past tense. For example, they might say, “First I ran over to the door. I kicked the wall. Then, I drew a flower on the board. Then, I jumped and fell down.” In 2 minutes, your kiddo produced FIVE past tense verbs in this example, while getting active and actually experiencing these verbs!

From Past Tense Verbs to Other Adaptations

There are so many ways I’ve adapted this over time. Check out some ideas below:

1) TO WORK ON SEQUENCING

If you want to work on sequencing but your kiddo needs more support, try doing the same protocol as stated above, but physically walking through the room to retrace their steps, all while retelling what happened at each place.

Another idea to provide support for sequencing is to write BIG numbers on squares of paper. Put the “1” on top. At each place your kiddo goes during their minute, they drop off the numbers in order. That way, when retelling, all they need to do is find the “1” and go in order through the various actions they performed around the room.

2) TO WORK ON ARTICULATION

I’ve altered this activity in several ways to target articulation! One way is to provide a sheet of articulation words. The kiddo chooses an articulation word and a verb off of a provided list (or they can come up with their own). For example, if working on “th” they might choose “three” and “draw”. They draw a 3 and then state “I drew a 3”. Or they might choose “weather” and “throw” and get to throw their “weather” articulation card. If you don’t have cards, they could draw a picture of weather and throw that!

The other way I’ve used this for articulation kiddos is to put their pictures around the room. They play the original way but have to recall what articulation pictures they saw at each step. For example, they might say “When I was jumping, I saw weather. Then I sat down on a three.”.

3) TO WORK ON VOCABULARY

There are so many ways to target vocabulary with this! One is to hide vocabulary cards around the room and follow the same directions as the articulation ideas. Another idea is to set up “stations” or areas of your room that they need to do various actions. Have your students perform an action at each vocabulary picture or station. For example, you could put up pictures of various items (e.g., pizza, shirt, blocks, car). When your student sees one, they should do a silly action. Then when they are reporting back, they could say “At the food picture, I jumped. At the clothing picture, I fell down” if you were working on categories!

Obviously every single version works on a variety of skills including sentence formulation and sequencing.

Hope you can use this in your speech room THIS WEEK! How have you adapted this game??

{thanks for reading}