Hello everyone! My name is Laura, aka Pinwheel Speech and I am a pediatric Speech Language Pathologist in colorful Colorado! I am thrilled to have this opportunity to do a guest blog post for Itty Bitty Speech! Being from Colorado, we can get a LOT of snow in the wintertime. On those cold winter days, we have to get very creative in the speech room to keep our littlest learners engaged! Here are a few of my favorite fun winter speech therapy ideas!
1. Go Ice Fishing!
One of my favorite winter activities is going ice fishing! This is the ultimate sensory experience! Simply freeze a small bowl of water in a larger bin of water overnight. Pull the smaller bowl out in the morning and go ice fishing the next day. You could even add a little real snow to the bin for added fun! This activity provides many opportunities for pretend play and language development. Depending on your student’s goals, you could practice answering questions, describing, expanding utterances, vocabulary, articulation, social language, etc. The possibilities are endless!
2. What’s in the Snowball?
A common game in our speech room is “What’s in the Hat?”. There are many variations of this game (What’s in the box? What’s in the bag? What’s in the stocking?). During the winter months, we play, “What’s in the snowball?”. We use white play foam but you could also use white play dough. During this game, we take turns hiding a polar animal (or any miniature object) in the “snowball”. Itty bitty Speech has a Polar Animal unit that would pair nicely with this game to teach polar animal vocabulary and provide visuals during the activity as well as a FREE Polar Animals Bingo Game, and a Polar Animals Send Home Language Unit. There are a few different ways that you can play, depending on your student’s goals:
- Receptive Language: Have your student listen to clues and try to guess the item inside the snowball.
- Descriptive Language: Have your student describe the item inside the snowball using descriptive language (e.g., EET strategies).
- Social Language: One person hides an item inside the snowball. Other group members take turns asking questions and trying to guess the item inside.
- Articulation: Students can practice their articulation skills in sentences as they play this game. You could even hide articulation objects inside the snowballs.
3. Print and Play:
Who says worksheets have to be boring? SLPs often liven up worksheets with dot markers, magnetic chips, and mini erasers. Another way that I like to use these worksheets is by placing game pieces on the pictures (see image). My students know that they always have to “work” for the game pieces before we play the game at the very end of the session. A popular winter game in my room is “Don’t Break the Ice”. I always have my students complete a task for each piece of ice before we play the game. This game has 36 pieces of ice so that’s a lot of trials! Of course we all know that the game itself is very short so this strategy gives your students more practice time and makes the activity last much longer.
4. Boom Cards:
Even though many of us have been able to see students in person this year, I have found that our students still love our digital activities! I like to use an iPad to present digital activities but many SLPs use interactive whiteboards or computers. Digital activities are very easy to transport and ideal for busy SLPs who have to travel between different locations. My youngest students especially enjoy feeding the winter animals (Feed the Reindeer, Feed the Penguin, Feed the Polar Bear, etc) as they practice their speech sounds.
I hope you all stay warm this winter and enjoy some fun winter speech therapy ideas!
Laura (Pinwheel Speech)
