St. Patrick’s Day Fun

It’s a nice , three-day weekend for most school-based SLPs! If you are like me, weekends  (especially long ones) are a time to relax, yes, but also a time to plan lessons, catch up on paperwork and reflect on students’ progress. Looking forward to the month of March, I have many St. Patrick’s Day activities planned to target a variety of speech-language goals. Feel free to download the resources; just leave a comment if you can. Thank you!

First, I made a quick, introduction video using Animoto to educate students about St. Patrick’s Day and related vocabulary. Animoto is a wonderful resource to create dynamic videos set to music that will engage students in learning activities. I created this multi-media resource using my own mp3 file and Google images. This video will be used in various flipcharts I will develop for use on my therapy room smartboard (ActivPanel.)These flipcharts can target a variety of levels and skills using a fun, St. Patrick’s Day theme. (Pre-made smartboard resources using a St. Patty’s Day theme can also be found at Smart Exchange.) Here is the short video I made:

If you are interested in using Animoto for yourself, click here.

Other activities planned for various groups include four-leaf clover templates to target word knowledge, wh question comprehension and story elements. Here are some examples:

Template (use an idea below, or adapt for your own activity):

Here is an example of how I used the template for brainstorming object attributes (very important foundation skill for teaching students to compare and contrast.)

Here is the same template used as a graphic organizer for wh questions. This activity could be used to discuss objects and object functions, etc., or it could be applied to stories to teach identification of story elements.

Here is a vocabulary page for introducing/reviewing simple vocabulary words related to the St. Patrick’s Day theme. This page could be used as a low-tech board for St. Patty’s Day games, or as a visual word bank for worksheets and activities:

A fun game that my students always love is Memory. Just print out duplicate copies of the Memory Card page onto cardstock, laminate and you are ready for an open-ended game that could be used to target a variety of speech and language skills. On each turn, students can practice sentence formulation using the vocabulary words, or they can identify similarities and differences using the picture vocabulary. Students can also give their peers “mystery clues” about their chosen cards and see if the rest of the group can guess what the pictures are. You can adapt this game into differentiated activities to address just about any objective:

And, if you are not yet tired of Bingo Boards, feel free to download the set I made using Boardmaker. Take a look at a previous post  for a summary about how I use these board to target a variety of skills:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/St-Patricks-Day-Bingo-7867839

For more ideas, check out these links for books, stories and crafts you could use in speech-language therapy sessions:

• Celtic Fairy Tales
• Crafts and Recipes
• Activities and Games
• Worksheets and Printables 
• Ideas and Resources
• PediaStaff Pinterest Board

Wishing everyone a happy, safe rest of February, and a wonderful start to March. Happy St. Patrick’s Day!