Spring Activities for Speech Therapy

If you’re like me, you’ve had just about enough of the cold weather and are itching to get outside in the warm sun. Even though it doesn’t snow regularly in South Georgia, by this time of the year, I’m ready to ring in Spring! We’re bringing Spring to Speech with the following 10 Spring Activities for Speech Therapy!

Just like Spring brings new life outside with new green leaves, pretty blossoms, birds chirping, and more, I feel like a Spring theme also breathes new life into our therapy sessions, giving us the opportunity to try new things, get outside, and discover and celebrate the glory of a new season. I put together ten of my favorite 10 Spring activities for speech therapy below!

10 Springtime Activities for Speech Therapy

1. Practice Being Weather Forecasters.

One of the first themes we do during Spring is Weather and Seasons. I actually incorporate weather themes a few times during the school year as the seasons change, because when the seasons are changing right in front of their eyes, it’s easier for the students to recognize it. We do a weather unit during the fall as well, which includes hurricanes, since we live in an area that has been directly impacted by hurricanes the past few years. Thankfully, our Spring weather unit is less about inclement weather and more about sunshine, rain showers, and warmer weather! We read books about the weather and seasons, sort vocabulary into the different seasons, and we even turn our therapy room into a weather station and let the students take turns forecasting the weather, which they love!

2. Go on a Speech Scavenger Hunt.

While we’re studying weather and seasons, we go on a Spring scavenger hunt! I give each student a paper and we head outside to hunt for Spring-related vocabulary words! When the students find an item on the paper, we talk about it, answer questions, ask questions, make observations, and more. This is a great way to incorporate movement into your therapy which increases engagement and retention. You can find the Spring scavenger hunt worksheets HERE. PS: They’re FREE! Print on white paper or colored paper for an extra pop!

3. Learn About Life Cycles.

Teaching life cycles are so much fun in the Spring. From tadpoles to frogs, eggs to chicks, caterpillars to butterflies, and more, life cycles are the perfect way to incorporate nonfiction into your therapy. We read life cycle books, sequence the steps, incorporate crafts, practice comprehension with factual information, work on retell, and even use interactive items such as puppets, wind-up toys, and plastic frog hoppers to increase engagement, hold attention, and reinforce correct productions or positive behavior.

I also use a few books and their corresponding book companions with our life cycles units: From Tadpole to Frog, From Caterpillar to Butterfly, and Pig’s Egg are three of my favorite books! (Amazon affiliate links included). Click the links below to see the book companions.

FROM TADPOLE TO FROG BOOK COMPANION

FROM CATERPILLAR TO BUTTERFLY BOOK COMPANION

PIG’S EGG BOOK COMPANION.

4. Go on a Bug Hunt.

Spring is the perfect time to learn about insects! Insects are a fantastic way to incorporate nonfiction into therapy, increase movement, guarantee high-engagement, and work on describing. While some students may be grossed out by bugs, many of my students love to hunt for insects. We walk around the school looking for spider webs, ant hills, bumble bees, grasshoppers, and more. We discuss why insects are important, how important it is for insects like bees to be protected, and how everything has a purpose in life, even if you’re a teeny tiny insect! I found the bug box and net in the Target Dollar Spot, but you can find them at the Dollar Tree or other places too.

5. Blow some Bubbles.

How can you consider Spring Activities for Speech Therapy without including bubbles?!?! If you’re looking for a way to increase excitement and engagement, bubbles are your answer. It’s amazing how something so simple can motivate students to work harder than ever, but somehow it works. Bubbles are like liquid magic. And they’re also super inexpensive. So load up on some bubbles the next time you’re at the store. NOT the super cheap dud bubbles, but the good kind. It’s worth the extra 0.50 to get bubbles that work. Believe me. My favorites are Fubble Bubble and Gazillion Bubbles. The Bubble Maker is also from Gazillion Bubbles and it’s the BEST. You can find it HERE and the hand-held bubble blaster HERE. The Fubble Bubble bubble wands are my favorite thing to gift students at the end of the year. I also use them for party favors too! You can pick these up from Walmart on sale in the Spring/Summer…stock up when you find them!

I use them for reinforcers, requesting, motivators, and to work on descriptors and vocabulary (small, big, lots, few, more, less, fast, slow, etc.)

6. Draw with Chalk.

While you’re out stocking up on bubbles, add sidewalk chalk to your list too. Now, this is where I admit to you that I hate touching chalk. It’s a sensory thing, and I while I can bite the bullet and do it when I have to, I don’t plan on having to anytime soon. So in case you or your students feel the same way, I have a few solutions to this. One, I just let the kids touch it and I don’t. The other option is these super amazing chalk holder thingies from Melissa and Doug. The chalk comes in the plastic holder which keeps you from ever having to touch the chalk. Genius. You can find them HERE.

There are so many fun ways to incorporate chalk into speech therapy. First of all, it gets the kids outside. Kids don’t spend enough time outside anymore, and I’m happy to play a small part in changing that when I can. Sometimes, we draw pictures with our speech sounds, and other times, we draw pictures for describing and comparing/contrasting. We make lists with chalk, write wordless stories with chalk, practice letter names with chalk, and use our imaginations with chalk. One of my favorite books for speech therapy is a wordless book called CHALK by Bill Tompson. It uses beautiful illustrations to tell a story, encouraging imagination, inferencing, and predicting. Lastly, we sometimes use the chalk to draw games like hopscotch, which we play to get the kids up and moving while they’re practicing their speech sounds or answering questions.

7. Plant a Garden (real or fake)

Some schools have amazing flower or plant gardens that the students can work in. If your school has something like this or if you have permission to start one, I say go for it! We have a small flower garden in our school that the different grades work on together, and it’s beautiful! But for times when we can’t work in the real garden or for my younger students who aren’t quite ready for the real thing, we “plant” a garden in our therapy room with sensory boxes!

I found all of the items below in the Target Dollar Spot, but you can also find them at Dollar Tree or Walmart. They are the perfect size for little hands.

To Make a Spring Sensory Box:

To make the sensory box, I bought a plastic container from Walmart and 2 bags of black beans for the dirt. I found the felt veggies in the Target Dollar Spot as well, along with the Fresh Food felt bag, but you can use plastic veggies too. The students have so much fun planting, watering, picking, washing, and eating the vegetables. It also works great for those students who love the sensory input of having their hands in the beans!

If you’re unable to find the felt veggies or have students who won’t do well with the small beans (I have a few who would put them in their mouth too), you can make a garden box like I did below which works just as great!

To Make a Homemade Garden Box:

Just cover a copy paper box lid or other shallow box with brown bulletin board paper, cut pool noodles to fit and cover them in brown paper as well, print out pictures of veggies to laminate, and glue the pictures to the backs of Popsicle sticks. The entire project probably took me about an hour to make, and we’ve used it for several years. This also works great for our farm theme as well. It’s perfect for teaching students the names of different vegetables they may have never had, discussing the differences in vegetables and fruits, and my personal favorite, teaching the students where our food comes from and the importance of the farmers who work so hard for us to have the food we eat (a topic that is pretty important in South GA where Agriculture is huge.)

You can also use the printable veggies in the sensory box with beans.

8. Have a Picnic (real or pretend).

There’s just something so enjoyable about sitting outside on a blanket to eat in the warm sunshine. Whether you use real or fake food (these felt pieces came from the Target Dollar Spot, but plastic ones work just fine, too), picnics are just plain fun. So many goals can be targeted through pretend play with food (or with real food as well). We set up a blanket outside and use play food to target requesting, manners, social skills, expanding utterances, ‘wh’ questions, comparing and contrasting, describing, and so much more. On days with inclement weather, simply set it up inside! Just the action of getting down on the floor with your students or children as you play pretend or share a bag of real popcorn will bring such excitement and joy, maximal engagement and motivation, and a memorable therapy session that they won’t soon forget!

9. Practice Sequences (and other speech therapy goals).

If you’re like me, you have plenty of students who need practice with sequencing events, and Spring is the perfect time for working on sequencing. Life cycles are a great way to sequence events, as well as activities such as catching butterflies, dying Easter eggs, catching a leprechaun or the Easter bunny, cooking recipes, and more! These picture cards help my students so much (available with and without the text underneath the picture, as well as in all four seasons), but you can also use real pictures or objects. You can find them HERE.

I also use my Spring No Prep Speech and Language Unit packet to target speech and language goals while keeping withe the Spring theme. With over 100 pages, I can almost guarantee there is something for everyone. It makes planning and implementing themed therapy much easier on days where planning time is short. (Anyone else have an IEP meeting a day in the Spring???) You can find it HERE.

10. Get OUTSIDE.

Finally, you don’t necessarily have to plan special activities in order to enjoy the springtime fun with your students. Simply moving the activities you are working on outside, be it at a picnic table, on the playground benches, or a sidewalk, can bring a new excitement to your lessons for the day. Sometimes, a change of scenery does everyone good.

Many SLPs or other service providers don’t have a classroom or office of their own, so if you’re one of those who has been sitting in a broom closet without a window all winter, pack up your books, card decks, or whatever you’re using for the day, and get some vitamin C while you’re teaching.

A Word to the Wise:

Not all students can handle the distractions of being outside, so it’s important to know your own students here. If they aren’t used to changing the environment, it may be something that you need to work up to. My students have learned that as long as they are engaged and making positive choices, we can do therapy outside at times. But if they aren’t handling it well that day, we may have to try it again another time. Doing therapy outside won’t work for all of your students, but it will work great for some. And I can almost guarantee that it will lift your morale as well!

Do you incorporate any of these Spring Activities for Speech Therapy into your classrooms or homes? Do you have any other Springtime favorites? I’d love to hear! Looking for more? Check out my favorite Spring Books for Speech Therapy here!