Can I make a confession? I very rarely do crafts in my therapy room. Most of the time, they seem very time-consuming on my part, while not allowing for as many trials as a more traditional drill approach. Also? I hate cleaning up afterwards! 🙂
But every once in a while – especially around holidays – I like to change therapy up a bit and try some crafty projects. They definitely have to be easy, low prep, and low mess!
Today, I would like to share with you four super easy craft ideas that you could adapt to almost any speech or language goal.
First up is this Christmas tree craft.
I made this by cutting green construction paper into a quick triangle and gluing it on a black background.
For this particular student with language goals, we were working on requesting and following directions. So the student had to use an appropriate question (ex: “Can I have the red marker?”), and also had to follow directions (ex: “Put the yellow star at the top of the tree.”)
Next up is this candy cane craft. I quickly drew a rough candy cane shape on red construction paper, then had the student cut it out. As the student was working on that, I cut small strips of the white paper for our stimulus words.
For this particular student working on articulation, we brainstormed words that started with S blends. I wrote them on the white strips, and then we practiced saying each word and glued it to our candy cane. This would also be easy to adapt to irregular verbs/plurals, articulation at the phrase or sentence level, pronouns, items in categories, describing, and so much more!
Next is this easy stocking craft. I had my student cut out the red construction paper “sock,” while I cut out the white decoration at the top. We then glued it to black construction paper.
This student has been working on the EET and describing, so I had her come up with a description for a stocking, which we wrote directly on the page. Again, this would be easily adaptable to articulation, following directions, grammar, categories, or sequencing goals! You could also write target sentences (ex: “Santa lives at the North Pole”) to practice certain fluency enhancing strategies, as well.
Finally, with our constuction paper scraps, we made a quick and easy paper chain. I cut the leftover paper into strips, and we glued interlocking circles together.
This student was working on S- blends, but would also be great for working on vocabulary and expanding utterances, or using complete sentences. Again, you could adapt it for almost any goal! And bonus – it helps clean up some of the mess from the other crafts. 🙂
Tell me, what goals would you target with these crafts?
PS: If you like these ideas, make sure to sign up for my email newsletter to get more fun therapy ideas sent directly to your inbox! Go to bit.ly/NatalieSnydersNewsletter to sign up.
I went searching for ideas for the next few weeks before Christmas and this is exactly the type of thing I was hoping to find! Usually when I type in “easy crafts,” the results are NOT easy enough for me. I agree that crafts are often not worth the headache, especially when students do not always appreciate them. THESE I can handle. Thanks for sharing!