Hello Simply Speech readers! I'm so excited to be a guest blogger today! About a month ago, I started a blog called Word Nerd Speech Teach and began making materials to share. In my blog posts, I try to incorporate a free, limited prep time activity that can be used for a variety of different goal areas. I hope that you can use the activities that I blog about or are inspired to make a variation that suits your needs!!
This Valentine's Day post is inspired by Pinterest and altered for speech and language goals and therapy!! These are some of the activities that my students will be doing to celebrate Valentine's Day!!
Valentine's Day Round-Up Activity #1: Articulation Heart Caterpillars
This activity is super easy and so much fun! Start by cutting out paper pink, red, and purple hearts. Next, print and cut out pictures of each student's target sounds and glue the pictures to the hearts. Add a head, antennae, legs, and googly eyes and you've got yourself one awesome Valentine's Day bug! (Challenge your students to make their bug really long for lots of practice!)
Valentine's Day Round-Up Activity #2: A Reinforcer Sealed with a Kiss (or a Hug)
I love any excuse to incorporate candy into my sessions and this is such an easy activity to prepare! First, start by writing numbers (I'd suggest 2-6) onto the bottom of chocolate kisses and/or hugs. (This indicates how many words a student working on articulation or phonology sounds must say, or the amount of language questions a student must answer.)
Next, put the candies upright and allow students to take turns drawing a hug or a kiss. If the student tries his/her best at their turn, they get to keep the chocolate treat!
Valentine's Day Round-Up Activity #3: Valentine's Day Grammar
This next activity can be used to target pronouns, "is" vs. "are", the "ing" ending, and syntax (to name just a few), but I'm sure you can come up with even more variations for your students' needs. Start with large paper hearts that have a large hole in the center so that students can put the heart around the item/answer they choose. If you are working on any of the goal areas that I mentioned above, this is how I would suggest targeting these areas. First, I grabbed boy and girl dolls so that my students can work on "she", "he", and "they". Students put the heart around the boy and use the word "he", the girl and use the word "she", or both dolls to target "they".
Two note cards with "is" or "are" encourage a student to choose an auxiliary verb to correctly match with the subject of their sentence.
Next, set out a few different action word cards to choose from. I love these Preschool Vocabulary Action Cards by Linguisystems, because in my opinion, the product is very versatile. Once the student selects the action that they would like, they put a post-it with "ing" at the end of the card and put another heart around that card.
To target basic syntax, have the student "read" the sentence to practice correct structure.
Valentine's Day Round-Up Activity #4: FREEBIE - Conversation Heart Reinforcer
Here is a FREEBIE that can be used for any age group and any targeted goal! This activity was inspired by Busy Bee Speech's marshmallow freebie, which you can find here. First, print and laminate a conversation heart mat for each student in your group. Students can keep any conversation heart candies that they earn throughout the session on this mat.
Next, make a few copies of the conversation heart page.
Finally, go to town targeting speech and language goals and allowing students to pick cards and enjoy their Valentine's Day treats!
You can access this activity at my TpT store here!!!! You can also follow my blog for even more ideas and tips. If you download this activity, please consider "liking" my Facebook page in order to stay up-to-date with new products and freebies!
I hope that you find these activities useful and that they save you a little bit of time as far as planning and preparing are concerned! Thanks for reading!
