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Freeze the day with this entire week of winter themed speech and language activities! These versatile winter activities can be used not only in the speech room, but also at home. Check out each week day for an ice and easy activity to beat the cold. Don’t miss our freebie winter language mini-books linked below to raise the “brrrrr” in your seasonal sessions!
Week of Winter Themed Activities
- Make It Monday
- Take A Trip Tuesday
- Water Wednesday
- Thinking Thursday
- Foodie Friday
- Scavenger Hunt Saturday
- Sensory Sunday
Make It Monday
For our winter themed craft, we made snow globes for both our own kids and our speech and language students. All you need is blue and gray construction paper, glue or tape, white paint, and clear plastic dinner plates. If you are feeling adventurous, feel feel to grab some snow glitter to add a little more flare to your project!
First cut a round circle for the snow globe background with the blue construction paper the size of the dinner plate. Then cut out a small gray rectangle for the base of the snow globe. Snap a picture of each kid for the inside of the snow globe. Print and cut the photo out of just the child. Paste the trimmed photo onto the blue construction.
At home, my son enjoyed dipping his thumbs in the white paint and making “snowflakes” on the background. I had him posed like he was catching snowflakes, but your students can do whatever they would like! Once the background was complete and dried, gently attach the clear dinner plate to the snow globe. We added a little bit of snow glitter first!
In the speech room, I wrote some /s-blend/ words on the snow globe background first. During our weekly session, my first graders placed their white thumbprint snowflakes on top of their target sounds while practicing. These snow globes turned out so cute and were an awesome activity to send home for additional practice. My students were so proud of their finished products too!
Take A Trip Tuesday
For our winter themed speech and language activity, we headed outside! In the Midwest, we are “lucky” enough to have snow during this time of year so I bundled up my boys and headed to the backyard! My littlest enjoyed picking up, tasting, and throwing snow. My oldest took advantage of the small hill across the street for some sledding fun too!
Now if you live somewhere warm or aren’t able to get your students outside, have no fear! Check out our Sensory Sunday activity below to bring the snowy outdoors inside with this week’s fake snow sensory bin.
Water Wednesday
Our winter water activity had to involved…you guessed it…ice! All you need is a small plastic bin, some arctic animals, and a few scoops or tongs. I filled the bin with about 2 inches of water then placed the small arctic animal figurines in the water. I stuck the entire bin in the freezer over night and we woke up to an icy snow cap!
I let my son chip, hammer, and dig out the animals. This was perfect for not only fine motor skills, but he was also able to label and describe the animals as he got them out.
At school, I was able to do the same activity, but slightly modified. I froze the animals in the ice, but allowed the bin to defrost a bit more for my students than I did at home. This allowed my speech and language students to more easily access the items during our large group session.
After reading Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do You Hear?, I placed the bin in the front of the room and students took turns grabbing an animal. They had to form a complete sentence in order to “keep” the figurines during the remainder of the activity. They loved digging into the bin and seeing which animals there were to choose!
Check out our Arctic Animals Winter Speech Articulation Craft for another fun winter animal speech craft too!
Thinking Thursday
For our winter themed book, we choose A Snowman’s Story. This is a beautifully illustrated wordless book about a snowman’s adventure one night. At home we looked at the picture together and made up the story as the pages turned. Such a sweet book!
During our winter speech and language sessions, I had the students do a picture walk through the book. Once done, we went back to the beginning of the story. Students practiced /s-blends/, sequencing, WH questions, describing, inferencing, and predicting all with just this one book. We love resources that allow us to target multiple goal areas in our mixed speech and language groups.
Also read: Why We Love Wordless Books in Speech Therapy
To go along with our winter wordless book, we paired these winter language mini-books in our sessions. Our students were able to create their own personal books to take home for additional practice! Instantly download these Winter Language Mini-Books to target the following:
❄️Winter Vocabulary
❄️Winter Colors
❄️Winter Directions
❄️Where Is The Snowflake?
Click here or the image below to instantly download your Winter Language Mini-Books today!
Foodie Friday
Mmmm Foodie Friday…arguably our favorite day of these themed weeks! This week Mandy made super cute and super delicious donut snowman with her daughters and students.
All you need are mini-powdered donuts, pretzel sticks, chocolate chips, M&Ms, and wooden skewers. Her daughter slid three donuts onto the wooden skewers. Then she stuck in the pretzels for arms, chocolate chips for eyes and mouth, and an orange M&M for a carrot nose.
She had her students follow simple directions to complete their snowman too. And of course, they were able to eat them when they were done. Using recipes in speech and language session is a great way to incorporate life skills, direction following, and more!
Scavenger Hunt Saturday
It is no secret we are obsessed with these vocabulary scavenger hunts. So naturally Mandy created a Winter Vocabulary Scavenger Hunt for our seasonal language sessions! Targeted vocabulary words include: Snow, Ice Skate, Earmuffs, Skis, Scarf, Hot Chocolate, Sweater, Hat, Igloo, Mittens, Sled, Snowman, Snowflakes, & Snowboard.
The best part about these vocabulary hunts? They can be used so many different ways! Have students search the colorful picture scene to locate items and then use the checklist to mark off each word. You can hide the vocabulary words around the speech room, house, or sensory bin for a fun search and find activity. Lastly, use the find and color or find and cover sheets to go with any of the above!
This week I decide to project the included colorful winter scene on the BenQ board. My students were able to circle each word they found and provide some descriptions before returning to their seats!
Sensory Sunday
As mentioned above, we have the perfect solution for you if you are not located in an area that will get snow this season. We made a winter sensory bin with fake snow for our students and own children to enjoy indoors.
Grab a large box of baking soda, a bottle of white hair conditioner. (I used Suave’s Tropical Coconut conditioner.), and a large bowl. Add some baking soda and conditioner. Mix until all of the baking soda is slightly wet feeling. Keep adding both until you have the desired amount! You can store the “snow” in an air tight container for several days as well. Just add a little bit more conditioner if it starts to dry out.
At school, I placed the fake snow on a lunch tray from my school and buried some winter vocabulary cards on the tray. Students had to dig through the “snow” to find items I described. They absolutely LOVED this activity. Plus everybody smelled really good afterwards and we didn’t have to get all bundled up!
This activity was a huge hit at home too. It kept my son occupied for quite awhile while I made dinner one night. He ended up reusing the arctic animals from our polar ice bin too. Always a great success when school and home can both benefit from the same activity!
Also read: 9 Amazing Benefits of Sensory Bins
And that’s it! We hope you have a (snow) ball with all of our winter themed speech and language activities. What are you most excited to try? Let us know if the comments below. Also be sure to follow us on Instagram and Pinterest as we will be posting all of this cold weather fun in action in addition to more winter inspired speech and language activities.
Happy winter, SLPs!
Kate & Mandy
Talking Mama Bears
