You have your theme picked out and your books are ready for speech therapy…Now what?

Easy!  Review your clients’ goals.  If you have a large caseload (ahem…school based SLPs!), this could take a little bit of time.  If you are in private practice or home health, it may not take you as long.  Make notes of what you need to address.  Who needs to work on /k/ sounds?  Who needs practice with irregular past tense verbs?  Jot it all down!

Plan A for Speech Therapy

If you are the creative type, make your own therapy materials!  Take advantage if you have access to a die cut machine (man, I miss having one of those!), you can do TONS with it!  Make your own worksheets on the computer.  You artsy folks can draw some of your own stuff.  I am NOT artsy so I use a lot of clipart…like A LOT!

Plan B for Speech Therapy

Ok so let’s say you are not the crazy creative kind.  Or maybe you are pressed for time…said no SLP ever, right?!

Shop Teachers Pay Teachers! (Click here to shop mine!)  This is really the easiest way to prep for your thematic speech therapy sessions.  Type in what your are looking like “ice cream speech therapy activities” and BOOM!  Your prayers have been answered!  There are so many great creators out there.  Even if you are the creative type, you can still shop materials.  Who wants to recreate the wheel?

Take an afternoon and look through your shelves of materials.  That’s how I started my themed units.  I took worksheets and cut & glue activities from my Super Duper books.  Make a copy of each page that fits your theme.  Then keep them all together in a file folder, binder or organize your themes like I did!  (Click here for that post!)

Craft Time in Speech Therapy!

I like to do “work” the first session of the week and craft the second session of the week.  So to finish up planning your thematic session, come up  with a craft!  Sometimes, I use the same craft throughout the week.  Other times, I may have 2-3 different crafts for the different populations I see.  The best place to get an idea is Pinterest!  I find great ideas for crafts there.  Many times, I will find one that I like but it needs to be adapted…so I adapt it!  You can check out any of my theme reviews to see my crafts.  Since I travel to each of my clients, I like to keep craft materials to a minimum.

Now you are ready to begin your thematic sessions!  If you missed the first 2 parts of this series you can find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.  There’s one more part of the series coming soon!