Autumn is a wonderful time of year—the leaves are changing, the air is crisp, and the holidays are just around the corner. With so many fun activities to do outside, it’s easy to forget that there are also plenty of ways to keep speech therapy interesting in the fall. Autumn is a beautiful time of year, with its crisp air, colorful leaves and fun holidays. Use the season to encourage language skills with some of these fall speech therapy activities.
Autumn is not only a time of falling leaves, but it’s also a great time to get your child’s speech therapy in. There are a host of fun activities you can do together that will help them learn new sounds and words. Here are some of our favorites:
- Fall-themed Bingo
Make a bingo card with pictures of fall-related objects, like leaves, pumpkins, squirrels, acorns, etc. Play bingo by calling out words instead of numbers. You can also use sight words or other words that they’re learning.
- Scarecrow craft
Make a scarecrow craft with your child! This gives them an opportunity to practice their motor skills and use scissors, glue, and other materials to make something all by themselves. As you work together on the craft, describe what you’re doing to help them expand their vocabularies and learn about the world around them.
- Play dough
Play dough is great for strengthening those little hand muscles, which makes it easier for kids to pronounce some sounds later on. Fall-scented play dough is even better.
- Leaf pile scavenger hunt
Collect leaves from your fall decorations or go on a walk and collect real leaves from the ground. Make a list of things for your child to find with the leaves: something hard, something red, something round. Put all the leaves in a pile (or two piles if your child is older) and see if they can find everything on their list.
- Pumpkin carving
Carving pumpkins with your child is a great way to expose them to new vocabulary words and get them excited about Halloween. Tell them what a pumpkin is, and how it feels when compared to other foods like tomatoes or apples. Talk about the different ways you can carve pumpkins, and what happens when you place a candle inside one
- Raking up leaves
Talk about different words for “leaf” (maple leaf, oak leaf, sycamore leaf), different words for “rake” (rake, broom), and different words for “rake up”.
- Pumpkin Picking
Take your clients to a local pumpkin patch to pick pumpkins! Work on asking questions (using all speech/language targets) by asking simple questions as you walk around and find pumpkins (“Where’s the red one?”.
In this speech therapy activity, students will use their hands to create a picture of the season/seasonal changes that fall brings. If you don’t know, fall is when the trees lose their leaves. Using their hands they will make a picture of what happens to the leaves when they fall off of trees. The student will be able to explain why autumn is called “fall” and where it comes from.