Familiar animals and their sounds: what’s not to love about a farm theme with your preschool and even older speech therapy clients?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I love speech therapy themes! We can work on our goals without a theme of course, but just a little something different freshens up the speech therapy routine. Plus, a good theme is great for adding in some personal connection from prior experiences!

The farm theme is a classic – many classrooms are already including some kind of farming theme in their classroom, even lots of younger kids take field trips to a farm.

My Farming Themed Language Therapy Unit for Speech Therapy includes everything you need, all the stimulus materials and quality graphic organizers you need for just about your whole caseload!

Simple Ways to Have Fun with a Farm Theme in Preschool and up!

Farming Themed App

Including an app as an extension activity can be very motivating for students and might even play into their special interests.

For my youngest students, I love using Peek A Boo Barn. It’s simple, with lots of core word opportunities for greetings and “open.” Plus, you get all the fun animal sounds!

All of my students love the Toca Boca apps, which are so open-ended that they work for so much language! There is a Toca Farm app that perfectly works with the farming theme!

Farm Themed Toys

I don’t think I need to tell most SLPs that you can continue the farm theme with some play-based therapy if you throw in a toy farm or farm animals. Just about SLP has used a trust farm set at least once in their career!

Farm Theme Songs for Preschool

Again, pretty obvious, but kids just love Old MacDonald Had a Farm!

Target Language with a Farming Theme

There are lots of other simple ways to include the farm theme into your therapy:

• Practice putting animals “in,” “out,” and “on” the barn
• Model/identify different attributes (sizes and colors) of animals: make the BROWN horse jump, time for the LITTLE pig to sleep, etc.
• Work on body parts and simple directions and prepositions by putting an animal on your head, on your hand, in the barn, etc.
• Follow one step directions or work on early vocabulary by prompting the child to select specified animals
• Ask simple wh- questions about the farm: Who works at a farm? What animal says “moo”? Where do the animals live? When does the rooster crow?
• Go on a farm animal scavenger hunt using multi-step or multiple modifiers (Example: Find the big pig under the table).
• Name parts of animals (Example: hooves, tail, ears, etc.)
• And most importantly: Listen to what your child says and recast and expand!

Farming Themed Hands on Activities and Books

My Speech and Language Therapy Lesson Plans for Back to School & Fall packet has 12 different themes, each with 2 crafts, 2 activities, and 2 story books per theme, including a farming theme! It’s the perfect therapy tool for those kids who like hands-on and play-based activities.

If you’d like therapy ideas for the whole autumn season, definitely check it out!

Farming Themed Language Speech Therapy Unit

My themed language units includes all the materials you need to target:

• Core vocabulary (help, eat)
• Basic concepts (dirty, full)
• Categories (food, farm animals)
• Describing (farm animals, farm tools, farmer)
• Tier 2 vocabulary (grow, plant, raise, local, produce)
• Prefix/suffix (re-, -er)
• Inferencing/predicting
• Sentence combining
• Using the conjunction “or”
• Comprehending narrative texts
• Comprehending non-fiction texts
• WH questions
• Comparing and contrasting
• Idioms (farming themed)

We’re talking over 100 pages of farming themed goodness, with gorgeous photos, helpful icons, and systematic instructional materials.

Other SLPs absolutely LOVE my farming themed pack. Here is some feedback I’ve received:

“This material was so comprehensive, I was able to use it with students in all grade levels. It targeted so many skills, and I really appreciated that the sections were separated out. It was a big time-saver. I like that the vocabulary targets were related by the theme. There’s lots of research to support that strategy, and I thought this material was so well thought out!”

— Jamie S.

“I LOVE these Themed Units. There are numerous language activities so I can use them with the majority of my caseload. They make therapy lesson planning a breeze. Please keep them coming!”

— Lori P.

Have fun in your therapy sessions and get the work done!

{thanks for reading}