This post is all about speech therapy during the summer! Check out this blog to find activity ideas as well as digital resources to incorporate within your therapy sessions to keep them fun and engaging over the summer.
Let’s start with activity ideas you can use within your sessions this summer. Most of these ideas work both in-person as well as via teletherapy for students of all ages.
Summer Activities and Resources for Speech Therapy
1. Bubbles:
Bubbles can be used both within in-person sessions and teletherapy, keeping your clients engaged and interactive. Whether you use a single tube of bubbles or a bubble machine, there are several different goals you can target.
Targeted goals include:
- Speech Articulation: /b/ (bubble), /p/ (pop; hop; up), /g/ (go!), /m/ (my), /d/ (down)
- Following Directions: clap the bubbles; blow bubbles; give mom the bubbles
- Action Words: run, jump, hop, clap, stomp, pop, blow
- Language Concepts: up/down; open/close; big/little; wet/dry
- Social Skills: my turn and your turn; learning how to wait
Activity Ideas:
- Blowing bubbles and having the child follow directions to pop the bubbles in different ways, such as “clap”, “stomp”, “kick”, and other simple actions.
- Taking turns being the one to blow the bubbles and the one to pop the bubbles.
- Working on making early requests, such as “ready, set, GO!”, “more”, “my turn”, along with other simple requests.
2. Sand:
Sand can also be used both within in-person sessions and teletherapy. If using in teletherapy sessions, your clients may enjoy having their own sand as well (but this is not necessary). You can talk to parents prior to the therapy session to see if they already have sand at home or even cereal that they can crush up to create “sand.”
Targeted goals include:
- Speech Articulation: /d/ and /g/ (dig), /s/ (sand), /k/ (cup), /m/ (more), /p/ (pour)
- Following Directions: fill the red cup first, and then the yellow cup; pour it out
- Action Words: dig, pour, dump, fill, go, stop
- Language Concepts: out/in; big/little; wet/dry; build/knock down
- Social Skills: my turn/your turn; requesting for assistance
Activity Ideas:
- Following directions to use different items within the sand, such as the “yellow spoon”.
- Working together to build a castle and then introducing new vocabulary when knocking it down!
- Search and find in the sand for target speech sound pictures/objects.
3. Chalk:
Chalk can be used within both in-person and teletherapy sessions. You can use outdoor chalk within sessions or a chalkboard when working indoors. Chalk is great to use when targeting a variety of different goals for children of all ages! From drawing out target articulation words or concepts, to drawing pictures that form a story, chalk can be used to target so many different goals while keeping the sessions new and fun.
Targeted goals include:
- Speech Articulation: drawing out target sounds/words, /k/ (color), /m/ (more)
- Following Directions: go get the red; give me the blue; draw a circle; color my triangle
- Action Words: color, draw, give, take out, go, stop
- Language Concepts: big/little; shapes/letters/numbers; first/then/next/last
- Social Skills: my turn/your turn; requesting for assistance
Activity Ideas:
- Categories: therapist draws a picture and student names the picture and its category along with additional items in the category. Then switch roles and the student draws!
- Following Directions: providing your student with directions of what to draw.
- Drawing pictures that contain the student’s target speech sounds.
Let’s move on to great resources you can use this summer during in-person sessions as well as teletherapy sessions. If using these resources during in-person activities, feel free to pair this resource with one of the activities listed above! Simply work on a few of the goals in the resource and then blow some bubbles or draw with chalk. I will break these resources down into target age groups.
Summer Activities and Resources for Speech Therapy for Younger Students (grades PreK-2):
1. Summer Story – A Day At The Beach
This resource provides a cute and colorful story related to summertime. Each page within the story has simple vocabulary as well as simple syllable structure to use with students with apraxia of speech or speech articulation goals. You can also use this resource to target vocabulary, speech sounds, answering questions, and more.
2. Summer Pronouns
Do you have students working on he/she/it? Then this is a great resource to use with your students! The pictures shown are simple and also allow you to work on a variety of vocabulary. You can even ask wh-questions about the pictures or work on language concepts such as categories and object function.
3. Listening for Details
There are a few different listening for detail resources available through The Digital SLP site. These are wonderful for targeting various language goals, including object function, understanding of new vocabulary, and auditory comprehension skills. You can also use this resource in another way by hiding the pictures and asking the questions to see what your student knows without them being provided with the visual cues. For example, it may say, “When we go camping we build a….” and see if your student can answer by saying “fire.”
4. Would You Rather
Do you have a new client this summer? Use this resource as a type of ice breaker! You can also use this resource to work on answering questions, stating the reason why to answers provided, as well as learning new vocabulary.
5. No Print Summer Early Learning Language Pack
This resource can be used to target a wide variety of goals within speech therapy. Some of the goals you can target include pronouns, prepositions, wh-questions, plural nouns, rhyming, phonological awareness, categories, and speech articulation skills. This resource is great for both teletherapy sessions and in person. It can also be used in conjunction with a fun and engaging activity where you go back and forth between this resource and then engaging within the activity.
Summer Activities and Resources for Speech Therapy for Older students (grades 3-5, 6-8):
1. Summer Syntax
This resource provides pictures and sentences all related to summertime while working on syntax and grammar goals. Simply drag the words provided into their spots to form grammatically appropriate sentences. This resource is best for older students.
2. Summer Reading Passages
There are a few different resources on The Digital SLP site that provide reading passages with questions. These resources are great to use with students who are working on auditory comprehension skills, answering questions, and vocabulary. These resources provide multiple choice options to the questions asked; you can hide the multiple-choice options and ask the questions first to see if your students need that extra support.
3. Summer Fluency Scenes
These fluency scene resources are great to use with your students working on fluency goals! You can also use these resources with students who have additional language goals, such as answering questions, picture description, syntax, pronoun usage, language expansion. These resources are also great because they provide you with information on all of the fluency-enhancing strategies to review with your students before describing the picture scenes.
I hope all of these activity ideas and resources provide you with a jumpstart to planning your therapy sessions this summer. If you can conduct your therapy sessions outside, do it! Enjoy this amazing weather this summer with your students!
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