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It is that time of year again! Back to school season is upon us. Lucky for you, we have lots of themed activities and ideas for your beginning of the year speech and language sessions.
And this is year is a bit special for Mandy and me. She is starting her 14th year as a preschool based speech-language pathologist which is absolutely amazing. Hard to believe it has been that many years!
I am also starting my 14th year in the schools as well. But after 13 years in a kindergarten through 8th grade building, I have decided to take a leap of faith and make a big switch…to preschool!!! While Mandy and I won’t be in the same district, I am super excited to be joining her in the world of the littles.
So keep reading to see how we will be kicking off back to school season during our preschool speech and language caseloads!
Back To School Speech & Language Activities
- Make It Monday
- Take A Trip Tuesday
- Water Wednesday
- Thinking Thursday
- Foodie Friday
- Scavenger Hunt Saturday
- Sensory Sunday
Make It Monday
For our craft this week, we have a super cute pencil name craft! Grab some yellow, pink, brown, and black construction paper. You will also need some tin foil, a glue stick, scissors, and black marker.
First assemble the pencil. I pre-cut the shapes then had my student glue the pieces together. You can easily work in some fine motor skills if you want to have your students cut out their own shapes for the pencil too!
Once glued together, I wrote the letters of the student’s name on the pencil then cut the letters apart. Then mix up the letters. Have your student find the letters in their name and glue in order. For higher level students, you could even do target speech sounds or add descriptors instead of the student’s name. Such a cute first day of speech and language session craft!
Take A Trip Tuesday
So as speech-language pathologists, we know that therapy starts the second you pick students up from their classroom. We feel the same way about the first day of school! We love popping into each classroom and introducing ourselves to kick the year off. Of course we sent our own littles off for their first days of school as well!
Since I worked in a kindergarten through 8th grade building, I always try and take a picture of my kindergarteners for a fun side by side of their speech graduation day. So fun to share with parents and see all of the growth over the years.
Water Wednesday
One of our kids’ favorite activities is playing with water. We can literally put anything in water and we have hours of instant entertainment. My students at school love water play as well. For a ridiculously easy water play idea, throw some magnetic letters in a few inches of water and let your kiddos go fishing for letters!
Thinking Thursday
For our Thinking Thursday book, we actually have two! But they certainly go together! We love The Night Before Kindergarten and The Night Before Preschool both by Natasha Wing. This story will prep any student, parent, or teacher for the first week back to school.
For our back to school activity, we have a super awesome freebie for you. Check out these FREEBIE Back To School Speech Goal Setting Templates to help your students start the year off reviewing and understanding their goals. With a fun sports theme, every student on your caseload will find a goal template they love.
Click here or the image below to grab yours today!
Read More: 5 Back To School FREEBIES for SLPs
Foodie Friday
Mandy and her girls made the CUTEST bus graham cracker snacks this week! Such an easy and fun kid friendly recipe for back to school season. Check out the ingredient list below.
- Graham crackers
- Vanilla frosting
- Yellow food coloring
- Mini Oreos
- Snap pretzels
Mix a few drops of yellow food coloring in to the vanilla frosting. Once a perfect school bus yellow, spread evenly on a graham cracker. Gently press three waffle pretzels for the bus windows in to the frosting. Then gently place four mini Oreos along the bottom for the wheels. How cute?! How easy?!
Scavenger Hunt Saturday
We have another awesome vocabulary scavenger hunt for this week! Check out our Back To School Vocabulary Scavenger Hunt to increase receptive and expressive vocabulary as well as increasing mean length of utterance, spatial prepositions, and more! Targeted back to school vocabulary words include: School, Bus, Backpack, Desk & Chair, Lunch Box, Scissors, Pencil, Paper, Book, Crayons, Glue, GLobe, Paint & Paint Brush, and Markers.
Print and laminate the vocabulary cards to hide around the classroom or place into a sensory bin. Use the sentence strip visual to create 4-5 word utterances. Use the find and color or find and cover pages for additional activity. Pair the hidden pirate picture scene with any of the above ideas for a fully comprehensive vocabulary activity for your next speech and language session!
Great activity for a rainy day too. Hide pictures around the house to keep your little entertained. Print either the vocabulary checklist or find and color page for even more engaging fun!
Want a back to school themed articulation scavenger hunt as well? Check out our Back To School Articulation Scavenger Hunt to target all sounds in the initial, final, and medial position in addition to initial /r-blends/, /l-blends/, /s-blends/, and vocalic /r/.
Sensory Sunday
Lastly, we have a simple, but colorful sensory bin with all things back to school. Grab some mini-erasers along with some dried black beans and magnetic or foam letters. For added vocabulary practice, laminate the target words from the above scavenger hunts. Your students will love hunting for mini objects as well as themed back to school words. Really whatever you have on hand can go in making this a super simple set-up!
So with all these awesome back to school speech and language activities, we hope you have a fantastic start to your school year!
Kate & Mandy
Talking Mama Bears
