Speech Therapy
Valentine's Day Activity

Valentine’s day is all about friendship, love, and fun! 

To celebrate this fun holiday, I created an easy-to-use, low prep activity. You can use this activity any which way you want to; however, I will explain my favorite “game” to play with any child. It is adaptable to target any speech or language skill.

Speech Therapy Valentine's Day Activity: No Hands

How To Play:

• Print and cut out the valentine card and decorations 
• Give a blank card to each student
• Place the decorations on the table but out of reach 
• Each student gets a turn to choose a decoration to glue on their card; HOWEVER, no one can point to the desired pictures (hence the “no hands” name). 
• Instead, each person has to describe which picture he/she wants using some attribute such as color, size, pattern, shape, category, or function. 

Skills To Target:

Again, you can target any skill; however, below are some of my favorites.

• Grammar (verb tense, pronouns)
• Use of complete sentences/complex sentences 
• Length of utterance 
• Vocabulary 
• Descriptive vocabulary (size, color, shape)
• Articulation  
• Sorting*

* For Sorting: Organize the decorations by attribute before starting the game. This is a great idea if your students need a lot of cues or are still in the direct teaching phase of learning. Some ideas for categories are:

• Colors
• Location 
• Shape

How To Cue:

Cueing during this game is the most crucial part! Use the pictures as the visual prompts.

• If a child is having trouble describing a desired picture, use the pictures themselves as visual prompts. For example, if a student says “I want a heart,” lay out all the hearts. 
• Then, verbally prompt for another category such as color or size. 
• As the student adds another descriptive vocabulary word, take the pictures away until one is left. 
• Then, the student repeats the whole phrase. For example, “I want the small, red heart.”

Easy and effective!

Following Directions: Preschool to Early Elementary

If your child or student needs to work on following directions, this is a great activity to work on just that!

Following directions requires a person to know vocabulary, have working memory skills, and adequate attention.

Below are some practice ideas for following directions while making a card. Make sure to pay attention to the type of "direction" words you are using and be aware of your child's vocabulary level as well as attention. 

Sequential: This direction is multi-step and something has to be done first, second, etc..

• First, glue and on the heart and then the balloon.

Before/After:  This is a temporal direction. Your child has to do something before or after he/she does something else. This is TRICKY!

• Before you glue on the candy, glue on a heart.

Spatial:  Give a direction with a spatial aspect (under, over, above)

• Put the candy under the heart

Basic: Basic means one-step, simple directions. If your child is having trouble, start here!

• Give me the glue
• Glue on the kisses and hugs

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