I love using year round themes for speech therapy because you can pull them out anytime, so you really get the most bang for your buck when you're buying resources.
There are lots of themes you can use all year in your speech therapy sessions, and today I'm going to share all of my favorite ocean themed books, games, songs, and toys for speech therapy!
DRILL ACTIVITIES
Speech Therapy Spinners: Include over 120 and 180 spinners, including ocean themed friends! Includes themed vocabulary and loads of expressive language, receptive language, articulation and phonology goals!
If you need a little bit of structure to get loads of trials - make sure to incorporate an activity that keeps your students engaged and encourages lots of practice. One of my favourites is this Themed Drill Sheet.
Paired with mini erasers, mini objects, or a dry eraser maker this activity will keep your students practicing and engaged the entire time (honestly, I don’t understand why - but it’s true!).
You can write in your own targets or use any of the over 60 goal strips included covering receptive language, expressive language, articulation, phonology and more!
BOOKS
Way Down Deep in the Deep Blue Sea: This preschool book for speech therapy has such a great flow to it - and it's repetitive! The rhyming text and bright pictures are so engaging. There is also a tonne of ocean themed related vocabulary and a different verb on each page so you can engage your students to move!. Listen to the story on Youtube HERE.
Three Little Fish and the Big Bad Shark: This twist on the classic Three Little Pigs is such a hit with students. I use this book for compare/contrast (to Three Little Pigs), f and sh sounds, varying prosody, and story retell. Listen to it on Youtube HERE.
If you are interested in an easy preschool craft to use with these prek books, check out these No Prep Book Craft Sheets!
Each of the listed stories has a one page craft sheet that can be used for story retell, to answer questions about the story, to act out the story while you are reading it aloud. The top part of the sheet is the setting of the story and the bottom half has the characters/items in the story. Your students will love this fine motor activity and it can be used all year round (not just for an ocean theme!). You can check them out here
GAMES
Shark Bite is a quick turn taking game and it's actually one of my favorite speech therapy games! My Game and Toy Companions make it super easy to target sooo many speech therapy goals (there are over 35+ games and toys included and over 60 goals you can target).
You can mix and match the goals and games and use this resource all year long!
Pop up Pirate: This is another game that my preschoolers (and even school aged kids love). The game companion is also included in my Speech Therapy Game + Toy Companions!)
TOYS
Melissa and Doug Underwater Adventure Magnetivities Set: I had been looking for an ocean play set FOREVER and was so happy when I found this one! You can create different underwater scenes and use the pieces for pretend play! You can target so many goals while playing with this toy such as grammar, following directions, pronouns, and spatial concepts.
Bath Time Toys and Water: You might get a little wet but this is a super fun and engaging activity! There is such a huge variety of ocean bath toys available (my favorite are ones that you can squeeze water out of!). You can target so many verbs with water play (splash, soak, spray) and concepts!
Melissa and Doug Ocean Creature Magnetic Puzzle: I often use puzzles for so much more than what they are intended for! I love this puzzle so much because it comes with a magnetic wand. You can place the creatures around the room, have the student 'catch' them and bring them back to the puzzle board. This is an easy way to get some movement into your therapy session and extend the activity time.
SONGS
These super simple songs have repetitive lyrics, which make them perfect for little learners. You can use them to work on word shapes, verbs, and simple vocabulary.
Animals in the Ocean
Move Like Sea Animals
Baby Shark Dance
Five Little Fish
DISTANCE LEARNING
Play Based Boom Deck: Let's go to the beach! This interactive Boom Deck has a variety of different play scenarios (and ideas) to get your student's imaginations brewing with ideas. You can follow the child's lead and target a variety of goals (ideas included!)
Fintastic Fish Maker: This free game for speech therapy allows students to create their own fish! You get to customize the color and shape of the fish, making it great for requesting, sentence expansion, compare/contrasting, and describing!
SENSORY BIN
My Thematic Sensory Bin Product has over 30 themes - and includes Ocean and Mermaid themes!
Each theme comes with a Sensory Bin Cover, Legend, and pieces to put in your sensory. You can create over 30 sensory bins with this one product!
You can create either mini sized Sensory Bins (perfect for on the go therapists) or full size Sensory Bins! These are perfect for your preschool speech therapy sensory bin activities!
HANDS ON ACTIVITIES
Play Dough Rescue: Hide ocean creatures in balls of play dough! Get your students to dig them out. You can also make ocean 'stamps' in the play dough using your ocean creatures.
Make a Handprint Octopus! You can write the child's targets on the tentacles or incorporate them into the process of making the craft. (e.g. s-blends: snip, smile, stick / verbs: cut, glue, stick).
Ocean Mini Object Scene: This is one of the 90 Mini Object Scenes in my Mini Object Scenes. Pair with any small manipulatives (mini erasers, pom poms, play dough) to create scenes.
It includes visuals for wh-questions, spatial concepts, and describing. You can use it to target so many speech and language iep goals!
MOVEMENT ACTIVITY:
Ocean Feed and Move: A feeding game with a twist! You and your student take turns spinning the spinner and doing the action towards the yeti to feed him a themed snack! Don’t drop the snack or you will have to start again! There are loads of therapy ideas included so you will be able to use it with your entire caseload! It also includes other winter characters so you can use it for a long time! I love to pair this game with any Oceanthemed book and pretend to feed the Ocean characters!
This combination of activities will allow you to use an ocean theme with your entire caseload to target expressive language, receptive language, wh-questions, articulation, and more!!
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