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Allison Fors, Inc.

Speech Therapy Tools for SLPs and Educators

5 Easy Speech Therapy Ideas Using Common Christmas Items

5 Easy Speech Therapy Ideas Using Common Christmas Items
Welcome and thanks to my guest blogger, Lindsay from Once Upon a Speech Room!

Christmas is one of my favorite times of year to plan therapy. I’m continually inspired to bring more new ideas into my therapy sessions, but my most favorite items to use are always simple, common Christmas items. They are easy to find, relatively inexpensive, and can be easily incorporated into therapy. However, the best part is that these items bring Christmas excitement and sustained engagement into all of my therapy sessions.

Christmas Advent Calendar

christmas advent calendar speech therapyChristmas advent calendars are great because there are so many pockets! I fill each pocket with a card or pictures, and my kiddos will select one at a time to practice. This is a great activity to use if you want to get many trials in a short amount of time. Perfect for articulation or language.

Gift Tags

gift tags speech therapyGift tags are perfect time saver and a great low prep item. They are ideal to use on the go when I have a busy day with kiddos who all have different goals. I laminate them and write target words on them using a dry erase marker. After practicing each word, we use them to decorate a laminated Christmas tree or a Christmas scene.

Fabric Gift Bags

gift bags speech therapyFabric gift bags are great for hiding pictures, cards or items. I have a bag that is called Santa’s Sack. I fill it up with Christmas themed minis, including a few small bells to encourage engagement with those tough kiddos. Great for describing, labeling, phrase/sentence/question formulation, but can also be used as an artic reinforcer or for artic drill-based activities.

Plush Elf

elf in speech therapyelf speech therapy
A staple in my speech bag during December! Ideal for targeting early language skills such as requesting, labeling, commenting and imitation of early sounds. These little guys are also great to use with preschool kiddos who are working on following directions, vocabulary, pronouns and various word and phrase structures. I often pair them with action cards and have my kiddos perform various actions while they explain what their elves are up to.

Christmas cookie molds

cookie cutter molds speech therapyCookie molds are perfect to pair with play dough as a reinforcer, but also great to use when targeting following directions. There are a wide variety available, but my most favorite molds are Christmas lights and presents. We use to decorate and trim a laminated Christmas tree.

I hope you are inspired by these easy low prep ideas!

Thank you Lindsay for these engaging ideas! You can find her on Teachers Pay Teachers and Instagram.


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5 Easy Christmas Speech Therapy Ideas

December 3, 2019 allisonfors Leave a Comment Filed Under: Therapy Ideas

How and Why to Teach Inferencing
12 Ways to Elicit Language Development

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Hi, I'm Allison! A speech & language resource author who loves the creative process of making therapy materials and clipart, as well as connecting with educators world wide. Learn more about me here! Read More…

Effective communication comes in all shapes and si Effective communication comes in all shapes and sizes! Verbal, written, gestures, sign language, an AAC device...

As educators we understand this but it’s also our responsibly to relay and explain this to caregivers!
“Children gesture before they begin to speak and “Children gesture before they begin to speak and continue gesturing throughout the language learning process...children’s early gestures not only precede, but also predict, the onset of a number of linguistic milestones–nouns, nominal constituents, simple and complex sentences. Gesturing may thus play a causal role in language learning, and could do so in two ways: (1) Gesturing gives children the opportunity to practice expressing ideas in a preverbal form. (2) A child’s gestures offer parents and other communication partners insight into the child’s linguistic level, thus giving the partners the opportunity to provide input tailored to that level.”

Goldin-Meadow, S. How gesture helps children learn language. (2014)

Some caregivers worry that we are giving up on verbal language when we begin using gestures or other non-verbal forms of communication.But gestures can be an amazing stepping stone to words. They seem to help the concept of communication click for a child...If I do this, then I get what I want/need! Have you found this to be the true?
SPEECH INTELLIGIBILITY • I updated this graphic SPEECH INTELLIGIBILITY • I updated this graphic with the newest research!

Note: These numbers are based on unfamiliar listeners in an unknown context. You will notice the dark blue is the milestone (when 95% of children at this intelligible) and the light blue is the average (when 50% of children are this intelligible.)

The snapshot on the left is a summary given by the researchers (Hustad, et al.) as a quick way to remember and recite this new information.

Find these updated intelligibility levels in the Free SLP Handouts!

The paid handouts were updated a while back with this new information and have a more detailed summary, including word-level intelligibility. If you own them, be sure to redownload!

Free Speech Therapy Handouts: bit.ly/FreeSLPHandouts
Speech-Language Development Handouts: bit.ly/SLPHandouts
Save this post! 📚 Some favorite books for soc Save this post! 📚 

Some favorite books for social emotional learning >> inferencing >> verbs >> negation

You can find more book round-ups by categories at: allisonfors.com/?=books
📣📣📣 Phoneme awareness is the ability to b 📣📣📣 Phoneme awareness is the ability to break down a word into the smallest unit or sound. This includes phoneme isolation, blending, segmenting, addition, deletion, and substitution.

It’s ESSENTIAL to work on these skills starting in Preschool and continuing to focus on them in Kindergarten and First Grade!

The Speech-Language Development Handouts break down what to target at each grade level + the phonological awareness steps with definitions and examples!

bit.ly/SLPHandouts
What can we expect from toddler attention span? ⏰ It’s easy to over-expect the amount of time a child can sit and attend to a structured activity. Do these numbers surprise you or are they what you’d expect?

Memory trick 💡 You can remember the number of minutes a child can attend is approximately twice the child’s age.

Note: Don’t forget to use developmental age.

Save this post + tag an educator or parent!

Gaertner et al. (2008) Focused Attention in Toddlers

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