If you are looking for winter speech therapy activities, you’ll love my Winter Speech Therapy SLP Lesson Plans, including crafts, play-based activities, and book recommendations for literacy! Get ready to feel like an organized AND fun SLP!
SLP Lesson Plans
There is nothing more satisfying than having a solid SLP lesson plan ready to go for therapy… except maybe somebody else making the lesson plan for you!
I have Fall and Spring Lesson plan packets, but when the weather starts to turn cold, you’ll love my Speech and Language Therapy Lesson Plans for Winter.
It includes 12 fun themes, each with two book recommendations, two craft ideas, and two activities, all using readily available (and cheap!) materials.
If you’re not into the crafts and activities (or have older students), you might want to check out some of my other theme packs, which are full of targeted speech and language activities! These packs aren’t month specific, but I feel like some of them work better at this time of year:
- Cooking Themed Language Therapy Unit for Speech Therapy
- Squirrels Themed Language Therapy Unit for Speech Therapy
Winter Speech Therapy Activities
There are so many fun winter speech therapy activities to keep us busy all winter long! December can be a fast month, with longer school breaks and fun school activities. But during those dog days of winter in January and February, we can keep things fun too! That’s why so many SLPs like to have themes in speech therapy. They provide just a little bit of variation to keep things fresh and interesting – for the students and the clinicians!
My winter speech and language therapy lesson plans include your favorite themes, like winter, snowmen, hats and mittens, bears/hibernation, and arctic animals, Valentine’s Day, and basketball. But, I included some unique themes too to mix it up, including winter sports, hot cocoa and marshmallows, New Years Eve, groundhogs and soup!
To run these sessions, I usually read the book and discuss any themes, vocabulary, WH questions, and comprehension questions first. Then we do an activity. Finally, we make the craft. This can take up to 3 sessions! For kids with limited attention, I might work on the craft and the activity in the same session, switching back and forth to keep things fresh.
Since I include two of everything for each theme, I usually will use one book, craft, and activity in therapy, and then tell parents about the other one so they can continue the fun at home! I’ve had quite a few therapists say these packets were perfect during distance learning because they were easy enough to send and do at home as well!
Snowmen Activities
I wanted to showcase a few of the themes I’ve included in my pack. Like all of my themes, the snowmen theme includes two crafts, two activities, and two books suggestions. Most of the books are readily available at your local library if you don’t own them!
Many of the activities and crafts include extra materials to help you in your therapy sessions. For example, I’ve included this visual to go along with my simple snowmen crafts. I like to use this visual to target sequencing. It’s never too early to start talking about transition words, like “first,” “then,” and “last!” In fact, these craft activities could be the perfect companion when teaching about sequential text structures, which is one of the 5 text structures I directly target with my Teaching Text Structure for Speech Therapy and Comprehension product.
The Mitten Activity and Companion Crafts
Some of my units were inspired by some of my favorite winter books. The Mitten by Jan Brett is a winter time classic in many preschool and young elementary classrooms. It wouldn’t be a winter themed speech and language packet without it! That’s why I was sure to include a hats and mittens unit in my winter-themed therapy pack.
Bear Snores on Activity
Another one of my favorite winter time books is Bear Snores On by Karma Wilson. So of course I had to include an activity and craft as a Bear Snores On activity extension! You can see here that each unit includes two crafts, two activities, and two book recommendations, with color photos so you know what the craft or activity is supposed to look like! I include templates or patterns for everything you need to print so. you just need to have the basics ready, like glue, colored pencils, or simple supplies like brown bags and paper plates. I’m all about keeping it simple!
Arctic Animals for Preschool and Up!
The great thing about using classic themes is that a lot of classrooms are already using these themes, especially in preschool classrooms. That means that the kids are already learning and practicing relevant vocabulary in their class AND we’re supporting the curriculum!
Arctic animals are a popular winter topic for preschool classrooms, so I was sure to include a polar animal unit! I have included some cute penguin and moose books and activities perfect for your students!
Goals and Targets in my SLP Lesson Plans
When we plan cute and fun speech therapy activities, we have to keep the goal in mind. It can’t just be cute and fun. We want to motivate our students to want to learn and we want to establish meaningful connections with our students. So we make it fun! But, we can’t let the activity or theme get in the way of speech and language intervention.
Each of my activities and crafts includes 3-4 suggestions on how you can directly target specific speech and language goals. Here are some winter themed examples:
- Use prepositions while gluing a snowflake craft
- Use verbs while digging in play snow
- Request materials during a snowman craft
- Label emotions while playing snowman bowling
- Name categories of winter sports
- Make early inferences with action dice
- Describe the parts of your new year’s clock
- Problem solve while making new year’s resolutions
- Work on plurals while making a cocoa craft
- Follow directions on a winter scavenger hunt
- And more!
Winter speech therapy activities: Groundhog Day Speech Therapy Theme
Groundhog day is the perfect time to address simple cause and effect in speech therapy, with “if” and “then” concepts! Many of my activities are completely open-ended, but when a theme or activity lends itself perfectly to a language concept, I included specific supports. After all, language does not develop one discreet skill at a time!
Hot chocolate craft for preschool
When you’re ready for a break from the usual wintry standbys, I’ve included some more unique theme plans as well. I love my hot cocoa SLP lesson plans for some cozy, sweet fun! My hot chocolate craft for preschool and older kids is sure to be a hit with your groups! And this hot chocolate bingo is a fun way to work on social skills, or really most goals!
Winter speech therapy activities: Valentines activities
Valentine’s Day is a sweet tradition in many American public schools. My international SLPs have to tell me: do they celebrate it or anything like it other countries?
Either way, we could all use reminders to be a little kinder and fill our days with love for others. You’ll love my Valentines activities, including love monsters for anyone who is a little tired of pretty pink hearts!
Winter speech therapy activities: Basketball speech therapy theme
A little orange playdough and some orange craft materials is all you need for some fun basketball speech therapy fun!
I find that it’s pretty important to incorporate movement into my therapy sessions for all kids! While we might not have room for a full basketball game in our speech therapy rooms (or closets…or spot in the hallway…), we can work some small scale basketball fun into our sessions!
Keeping it Fun and Functional!
When we are starting out with our students, we want to be intentional and give clear instruction and structured practice attempts. When I’m working with students at this level, I love to use my mini articulation and language cards to make sure we’re getting in enough direct practice. My Winter Speech Therapy Lesson Plans include 72 pages of artic mini cards targeting every sound in every position typically used in the American English language. There are also 17 pages of language mini cards with pictures to elicit verbs, pronouns, adjectives, and core vocabulary.
I like to print these mini cards on different colors of paper and include them in my crafts and activities. The best part is, when kids get a take home craft, they get take home speech practice too!
So what do you like to do in the winter? Do you have any favorite themes or activities you like to do every year?
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