4 Easy (Low Prep!) Holiday Crafts for SLPs

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.