Let’s face it…simple speech therapy activities are the jam! There’s little to prep and keep up with. You don’t have to manipulate 10,000 items on your therapy table. Most of the time, you can stretch that activity to reach the majority of your clients, if not all! That last part is a huge BONUS! As a traveling SLP, I like simple. Simple means less junk in my bag. Less in my bag means my body doesn’t feel like it is a pack mule. ( No offense to the pack mules of the world!) Even if you are not a traveling speech therapist, you can take great joy in SIMPLE!
Prepping the Simple Speech Therapy Activity
Today’s simple speech therapy activity is perfect for winter! I posted it a year or two ago on my Instagram but thought I would write a blog post. That makes it easier to find and share with all of you. It’s called “5 Mittens and a Snowball” but you could have more snowballs and mittens. My mittens were made from felt but you could easily use construction paper and laminate them. I traced my hand by going around my thumb and ALL of my fingers. I did not go between the fingers. Then I cut out the shape. This should give you a nice mitten shape. Now gather some white pompoms. I used the bigger ones but you could use a mix of sizes. These are your snowballs. Now lay the mittens out in front of your client/student(s).
Using the Simple Speech Therapy Activity
- Spatial Concepts: With all of the mittens laying out, give the child a “snowball” with direction to place the snowball on/under/beside/between a mitten. For example, if I am working on the concept “under,” I would say “Put the snowball under the blue mitten.” Continue this way until you have reached the number of desired trials.
- Pronouns: This is great for group work! Give each student a mitten. You can use directions like, “Put the snowball on her purple mitten” or “Who has the blue mitten?” If you are working on pronouns, the answer to that last question would be “He has the blue mitten.” For extra practice, you could combine this idea with spatial concepts.
- Colors: This one is really easy! “Find the red mitten” or “Show me the yellow mitten.” When the child finds the correct mitten, he can place a snowball on it.
- Quantities: This one requires more snowballs and one dice (or is it die?). Give each student a mitten. The student rolls the dice and places that number of snowballs on his mitten. Once everyone has rolled, discuss who has more/less. You can also use directions like “Sally, find the mitten with three snowballs.”
- Sorting: Use big and little snowballs for this idea. Give each student two mittens (stick with 2 colors if you can!) and tell them to place all of the small snowballs on the blue mitten and the big ones on the yellow mitten. If you decide to use colored snowballs, give them two mittens and snowballs to match. Let them sort by color.
- Articulation: You may want to use small snowballs for this idea. A child rolls the dice. Says his target word the number of times on the dice. Then puts that many snowballs on his mitten. Easy peasy reinforcement idea that allows you to drill but he thinks it’s a game!
You could use this activity through the winter! I store mine in a gallon size plastic bag. It stores easily in my “winter clothing” theme bin. Need more winter ideas? Check out my favorite winter books here! You can also find more tips for using mittens/gloves here.
UPDATE: Looking for a way to use this activity safely? Print and laminate mittens. You can print on colored paper or let the kids color their own set. Use a cotton ball as your “snowball” so it can be easily thrown away! (See below. Like these? Find them in my Free Resource Library! Sign up here for access.)
