5 Fun and Easy Spring Speech Therapy Ideas:
Bye-bye cold here comes spring! It’s time to make room for the new season. What better way than to bring some new exciting speech therapy ideas that are seasonal? There’s no better way to grasp a child’s attention with speech therapy than making it fun and seasonal. Below are 5 easy spring-themed speech therapy ideas to try with a child in a therapy setting, or outside. These easy ideas will be effective, fun, and productive, without the child realizing that they're learning new concepts:
1. Spring Themed Crafts:
Spring-themed crafts are a great way to target articulation and are great for following directions. This idea can mostly target any goal. One easy spring craft is making a paper flower. Follow this video and make the paper flower with your child. As you are making the flower, have them work on some goals. Some goals can be following directions, as you go through the steps make the child do it on their own by following your instructions. One can also use the creation of the flower to practice articulation. If your child has trouble with certain sounds for this example let's say p, integrate it in. For example “put the glue on the paper” “pick up the paper” “pick up the flower petals”. Have the child repeat the short utterances after you to practice the specific speech sounds they need help with.
2. Nature Walk Spring/Scavenger Hunt:
The best part of spring time is the change in weather. A change in weather means a change of scenery plus it's nicer out. Kids like to move and not sit still, this way it keeps it exciting. This activity allows you to target a lot of goals, and basic concepts: like direction following, find a flower, find a blue car, following directions task: pick a flower, do this, do that, work on verbs: skip, leap, walk, stop, go, WH questions: where is the flower, who found the flower, what color is the flower? As well as practice expanding utterances: make conversation flow and allow the child to expand not just yes, no, answers. Try to elaborate and stretch out utterances and build a conversation to practice speech. For this try using descriptive words like how does the weather feel, and encourage the child to integrate vocabulary.
3. Spring Do It Yourself Books:
Spring do it yourself books are quick books that you can make based on the child's area of struggle. If your child has problems with saying r or cannot produce more than 1-2 word syllables then make a cute picture book targeting their goal and make the images velcro. The books can be made with printer paper covered with lamination with short sentences on each page. The object of this activity is to have the child read and finish the sentence on each page by placing the velcro object that finishes the sentence. This way as you go through the book they pick up the item and place it where it fits and have to repeat out loud what they found. This can target numerous goals and you can really personalize this activity to the child's interest and area of struggle. This way they are working on their goals in a fun interactive way. You can even add a reward incentive in this activity. As the child completes pages you can give them a point and once they get 5 points they can take a play break for a few minutes.
4. Spring Activities Dramatic Play:
The spring dramatic play activity is an excellent activity because kids love improv play and it is good for strengthening their cognitive functions (brain power)! This will target joint attention since it involves you to play and interact with the child which is effective and more fun for the child. It will practice letting the child take the lead, and you can easily include what they are interested in your therapy. This can aim to target any goal really. Examples of how you can do this while making it spring themed is you can set up a mini spring garden scene and act out
mini scenes. Mini scenes can be anything like planting flowers, picking flowers, and other spring concepts you can think of, and incorporate any goal along the way. You can have them practice expanding utterances by talking through what they do, and you target certain sounds of articulation and practice those. Kids will feel like they are not even working but rather playing a fun interactive play game with a friend, therapist or parent.
5. Surprise containers:
Put anything in a container and call it a surprise and you have a child's attention. You can hide practically anything inside the containers however, since it is spring, hide things in it that correlate with the season like mini eggs, flowers, mini butterflies, mini caterpillars, and images of sunshine. Make the game when they pull out an object or image they must start by naming the object or image. They can also request objects, and doing this can encourage the child to have to use it in a sentence or story. This activity is very fun and interactive and you can make this around any target goal.
The springtime season approaching means warmer weather, sunny days and longer days but it also means more exciting ways to practice speech therapy. I hope these 5 seasonal spring ideas will help you create some fun and easy ways to keep your child up to speed with their speech-language skills. Speech Matters can offer sessions virtual or in-person if you need some extra help this spring! Why do it all yourself when Speech Matters accepts almost all insurances and is here to make it easy! Contact us today at (212) 861- 7800 or email us at linda@myspeechmatters.com. Your speech matters and there are people here to help!
