During our air transportation week, we talked about airplanes, rockets, helicopters and hot air balloons.  You could say we “flew” through our activities that week in speech therapy.  (Sorry, terrible joke, I know!)

I found this craft on Pinterest.  But as always, I changed it up and adapted it to fit my needs.  I find most of my kiddos do not know what a hot air balloon looks like.  We live in Texas so there’s really desire to want to float even closer toward the sun.  It’s hot enough on the ground!  So we look at pictures and talk about how they work.

I used this craft primarily for articulation.  However, I also used it with my little ones who are working on 2-3 word phrases, colors as well as my preschool clients that need help asking questions.

Supplies

1 paper plate for each student (I used large size plates but you can use small ones)

1 sheet of brown construction paper

Assorted squares of construction paper (any colors-I choose 3-4 colors)

Glue, scissors

Prepping the Craft for Speech Therapy

I cut 3-4 different colors of squares out in preparation.  This allowed my language clients to work on colors as well as requesting the correct color with an appropriate question.  You also need to cut a basket out of the brown paper for each student.  Older kids can do this themselves.  I work with a lot of little ones so I usually do all the cutting!

Using the Craft in Speech Therapy

Now to practice skills and put the balloon together.  For artic clients, I wrote the target words on the basket.  Each time a child said a target word correctly 5x, he glued 3 squares on his the paper plate.  (The paper plate is the balloon part.)  Repeat the process until the “balloon” is completely covered.

To work on early language (like increasing MLU),have the child request more squares with phases like “more please” or “I want more” or “more red please.”  Slightly older kids (preschool age-kindergarten age) can work on using simple questions such as “Can I have red please?”

Once the balloon is covered, glue the basket to bottom of the plate.  Ta da!  Your hot air balloon is complete!  Now your kiddos working on articulation have something to take home to work on for practice!

You can see our theme in review if you click on this blog post!