5 Simple Hacks for Using Speech Therapy Crafts

I love using crafts and anything hands-on in my speech therapy sessions. They’re engaging, easy to use, and you can target so many goals with them. Let me share a few of my favorite tips for using speech therapy crafts to target practically any goal.

First, let’s talk about a few types of crafts that are great for implementing into your sessions:

• Themed crafts – If you do themed therapy, crafts are an easy asset to your themes. Google “Valentine’s Day crafts” and you’ll find tons of ideas.
• Open-ended – With mixed groups, having open-ended crafts will let you target almost any speech goal. Use them as a reinforcer, in conjunction with task cards, or as a target itself.
• Low prep – You also want crafts that do not take precious time to prep. As busy SLPs, we don’t always have time for elaborate, involved crafts. Stick with simple!
• Easy to follow directions – I love giving my students as much independence as possible. It’s always nice to have kid-friendly directions that make the craft easy to complete independently.

Now, here are my 5 hacks to making crafts work for almost any goal! Perfect for mixed groups.

1. Take advantage of what the craft lends itself to target.

Crafts in and of themselves can be used to work on several goals: following directions, oral explanations, conversation level articulation and fluency, describing, themed vocabulary, etc.

Use this to your advantage by thinking of ways that you will have each student address their goal during the craft activity. It’s a great way to use one activity in a mixed group. We’ll look at individual goals in more detail in a second.

2. Break it up into steps

Depending on the nature of your group, sometimes it’s easier to use a craft as a reinforcement activity. Break the activity up into the different steps. Then, do task cards or trials after the students complete each step. Crafts are a great way to keep little hands busy and engaged when you are working with other students in a group.

3. Have students earn pieces of the craft by completing a task

Another way to use crafts as reinforcement is to have the craft already prepped. Then, the students can earn the different pieces – scissors, glue, paper plate, crayons, paint, tissue paper, pom poms, etc. After they earn all their pieces by drilling or doing a task, you can spend the last few minutes putting the craft together.

4. Use the craft as a station activity

If you use stations in your speech room, consider having a simple craft as one of the stations. Make sure the craft is straightforward enough that students can do it independently. Have the directions posted and broken up into steps. They say their sounds or do their task card to move to the next step.

5. Revamp the craft to accommodate any disorder

Alright, friend. Here’s where the rubber meets the road. I’m about to give you a few actionable steps to tweak the crafts to accommodate a variety of speech or language disorders!

• Articulation ideas:
  • Write articulation words all over the craft.
  • Glue pictures of their target words onto the craft.
  • Have students give an oral explanation of how to make the craft using their good speech sounds.

• Fluency ideas:
  • Use pieces of the craft for pacing practice.
  • Write or glue strategies and definitions onto the craft.
  • Have the student give an oral explanation of how to make the craft using their fluency strategies.
  • Draw or glue parts of the speech machine onto the craft and talk about what each does.
  • If the craft isn’t perfect, talk about how mistakes are OK whether it’s in activities or in speaking.

• Voice ideas:
  • Glue or write vocal strategies to the back of the craft.
  • Write ways they will use vocal rest around the craft.
  • Draw or glue parts of the speech machine onto the craft and talk about what each does.

• Language ideas:
  • Write vocabulary words on the craft.
  • Have the student describe it and compare/contrast it to each other’s.
  • The students can follow directions to complete the craft.
  • Students can make up a story about the theme of the craft.
  • Have students give an oral explanation of how to make the craft using correct grammar.

Done for you crafts!

If you don’t want to deal with tweaking the crafts to meet different goals, I feel you and I got you! My Seasonal Accordion Craft Bundle is mix and match and addresses a huge variety of goals. You can easily use the same activities with all the students in your groups.

I love that this is something that does not take a lot of time to prep AND lends itself to lots of opportunities to practice their speech and language skills! I’m excited to say that these adorable accordion crafts are perfect for that. 🙂

I’m all about the time-saving activities. So, friend, I hope this gave you a few ideas! How do you use crafts in speech?