**DISCLAIMER: This blog post does contain affilate links. If you purchase from on the links, it does not cost you extra. I earn a small portion from the sales.**
“Where are we going today?” is my favorite question to hear during summer speech therapy. My clients have absolutely loved our pretend vacation. We’ve already created our map so we know all of the stops. In this post, I’m sharing our first two stops in Florida…The Everglades and Dry Tortugas National Parks.
Speech Therapy in the Everglades
We start out each session with the book National Parks in the USA. You can find it and all of the books in this post. I read through the park we are in that day to set the tone. I also will share actual pictures from a National Park book I found last summer in the Target dollar spot.
Now to the fun part…THE ACTIVITY! I set up the environment. Since I am a mobile SLP, I had to create a “swamp environment” that travels easily and is quick to put down and clean up. I found a 3 pack of plastic blue tablecloths. I used one of them for the “water.” (Put the other two away for other activities.) Then I set up a balance beam I found at Walmart for $20! It comes in 10 pieces that are super easy to put together. I only used 5 pieces to create a “boardwalk” across the water. To finish up our Everglades, I set plastic alligators in the “water”…10 to be exact. (I found a pack of 16 here.) A little something I did extra was put colored dot stickers on the alligators’ bellies. This step isn’t necessary for the activity to work.
Since I work with children 1:1, we only used 10 alligators and they brought one to the table each time he/she crossed the “boardwalk.” If you’re working with a group, the kids can leave them in the water. My client would bring the gator back to the table, see what color the dot was on it’s tummy and then color a gator on the paper that color. This was all after saying a target word correctly 5x or completing a language task! The process was repeated until all the gators had been colored.
Speech Therapy in the Dry Tortugas
Day 2 here we come! I show pictures from the books mentioned above but I also share a quick YouTube video or two that really illustrates the park. I set up our “enviroment” with a blue tablecloth (our water) and these turtle stepping stones. I wrap small plastic sea turtles in pipe cleaners and explain that we have to save the baby sea turtles! Since we are in the ocean, we must step on the big turtles in order to rescue the small ones. I used 6 turtles but if I did this with a group, I would definitely have more. For each word the child produced 5x (or completed a language task), he/she had to retrieve a small turtle from the “ocean,” bring it to the table and unwrap the “trash” (aka pipecleaners) off of the turtle. Again, repeat the process until all turtles are SAVED!
I hope your clients/students enjoy these activities as much as mine did! Heck, I even did these and loved them!! Just finidng this post? Be sure to check out what books we are using and creating our road map!
speechchicktherapyblog.com 