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Hello, Spring! If you are from the Midwest like us, then you know how welcomed the impending signs of spring are! While it may not be shorts weather just yet, we are looking forward to stretching our winter legs and diving into 3 Spring-Themed Speech and Language Activities. We are excited to share a spring sensory bin, speech sound hopscotch, and mini-language books to amp up your spring speech and language sessions!
And to all you mamas out there…take note! These activities are great for entertaining your littles while the spring weather sorts its crazy self out.
Want free products for home practice and generalization of skills, tips to encourage and support speech and language development, and ways to make practicing part of your daily home routine? Then enter your email below to receive FREEBIES exclusive to our website! (These are not available on our TPT store although we do have quite a few freebies listed there as well!)
Gardening Sensory Bin
First up…a good old fashioned sensory bin! Not sure about you, but our students absolutely love when the big bin of goodies is on the table when they enter the speech room. Immediately the questions start flying, the energy is lifted, and they are ready to work without realizing it.
This week I made a garden planting sensory bin containing all the items needed to plant and care for a flower. Here is what I included:
- faux flowers (I used these ones!)
- potting soil (feel free to substitute with brown or black crinkle paper!)
- plant markers
- mini gardening tools
- empty watering can
- dried beans, coffee beans, lentils, quinoa, etc. for “seeds”
- small plastic planter pots or containers
- gardening gloves (if needed)
- small plastic bin
- large plastic bin
We encouraged some initial free play to explore the items and get used to the feel of the dirt. (Some students preferred to wear gardening gloves over touching the dirt directly.) Once everybody took in the sights and feels, we utilized some simple sequence cards to correctly plant a flower from start to finish. It was an awesome way to target overall expressive language including vocabulary, sequencing, and sentence formulation all while keeping busy hands busy. There was also the added bonus of built in turn-taking with the mini garden tools too!
Since my students loved digging and planting and chatting during this activity, I bought everything home for round two with my son. He raked and shoveled in the dirt for what seemed like hours! However, I did notice some construction trucks made their way into the bin as the evening went on.
Speech Sound Hopscotch
I absolutely love any opportunity to get outside for a session especially with my high energy and fast paced students! We are very lucky at my school to have the space to do so as well as a great outdoor classroom space. For this next activity, we headed outside for speech sound hopscotch!
This is such a simple, but engaging speech activity. Not much is needed other than some large chalk pieces and a quieter space on the black top. We were lucky to get out between recesses so it worked out perfectly! I let the students draw their hopscotch pattern, then I filled in their target words. They had fun just hopping and practicing so we didn’t follow the traditional hopscotch rules. However, if you are interested, check out this link for the official hopscotch game rules. Kinda intense…who knew?!
I altered this a bit for an easy at-home activity as well. My son is four and loves all things gross motor, but will play with chalk for a good while sometimes too. For his hopscotch pattern, I just wrote uppercase and lowercase letters. He jumped and stated the letter names or sounds as he went. We even drew a pattern with the letters in his name. It was an excellent and efficient way to burn some energy on a semi-warm afternoon!
Mini-Language Books
Lastly, we printed and stapled together these spring-themed mini-language books. I love these at school for targeting language and direction following, but I also love these for at home to have available while I am making dinner or focused on the baby more. They are a cute and easy resource for a variety of ages and targets!
There are four mini-language books total including: Spring Vocabulary, Spring Colors, Spring Direction Following, and Where is the Tulip? All that’s needed for this activity are the coloring utensils of choice and the printed mini-language books (link to FREEBIE down below!). These books are great for targeting simple direction following and spatial prepositions as well as vocabulary identification and labeling. There is the added bonus of being able to send these spring-themed mini-language books home with your students for additional practice as well. At our house, my son just simply colored the pictures, but enjoyed showing off his pictures when he was done.
You can grab these FREEBIE Spring Mini-Language Books via our TPT store by clicking here! The freebie comes with the four student mini-language books as well as a larger teacher version to help model the directions, review vocabulary, and provide visuals.
Lots of spring fun ahead too as the weather continues to even out and get a little bit warmer each day. These 3 Spring-Themed Speech & Language Activities will hopefully jump start your season! Did you try out the gardening sensory bin, speech sound hopscotch, or mini-language books with your students or own child? Let us a comment about how it went! We would love to hear how you are celebrating spring…even if we still might have to dress in layers and may or may not see a snow flurry here and there!
Happy Spring, fellow SLPs and mamas!
Talking Mama Bears