One of the beauties of teletherapy is that we can (digitally) take our speech therapy students anywhere, so I look forward to doing winter sports-themed activities every year.
Activities about action-packed sports such as skiing, hockey, ice skating, and snowboarding always spark my students' interest in January and February teletherapy sessions.
You might be thinking– But my students don't live in a place with snowy winters.
That's okay, not all of mine do either! My warm climate-dwelling students are even more drawn into learning about these activities they've seen in books, movies, or... the Winter Olympics.
On years when The Winter Olympics take place, be prepared for your students to join your next session and excitedly tell you how they saw something on T.V. that they had learned about in speech the week before.
Even in non-Olympics years, there are many interesting things about winter sports. The history, equipment and climate vocabulary, and concepts (temperature, speed, order/place) surrounding it provide lots to learn and talk about.
So here we go... a round-up of activities that you can use to bring winter sports to life in your teletherapy sessions.
Winter Sports Virtual Field Trip
Since many students may not have firsthand experience with winter sports, there are several ways to kick off the theme and introduce the vocabulary. I like to use this PDF as a virtual field trip to look at big, real photographs of the sports in action.
The pictures elicit a lot of language in and of themselves, but I can also use the built-in prompts on each page to target any number of goals.
Winter Sports PDF Speech Therapy Activities
For younger students, this winter sports-themed interactive PDF is a great way to dig deeper into the theme and hone in on speech and language goals. Using the clickable buttons, fillable text fields, and "checkable" boxes, you can work on anything from description and vocabulary to verbs, negation, plural nouns, and even articulation!
Winter Sports-Themed Books
Search the following book titles/authors wherever you access digital versions of books (your local library, YouTube, websites, online stores, etc.).
Non-Fiction Books
If you use Epic (free for educators), there are endless possibilities! Seriously, just type any winter sport into the search bar. You'll instantly have tons of non-fiction books at your fingertips!
Fiction Books
Learning to Ski with Mr. Magee by Chris Van Dusen
Kamik Joins the Pack by Darryl Baker is a story about sled dogs.
Winter Willpower by Bill Yu is written in a comic book format.
Mice on Ice by Eleanor May is a cute story about mice going ice skating.
Goodnight Hockey Fans by Andrew Larsen is about a boy that dreams about hockey.
Winter Sports-Themed Videos
This video 1.5 minute-long video has few words, but shows short video clips of several popular winter sports.
Your students can learn about the history of The Winter Olympics in this 3.5 minute-long video.
This video shows still photos as it lists the sports included in The Winter Olympics.
Winter Sports Games & Activities
Your students will love this video-game-style website that simulates downhill skiing. And here's a similar online game!
PBS Kids has this dogsled activity for younger students. This snowboarding game and this winter games activity are also available on the site!
This Highlights Hidden Picture shows penguins ice skating and is a great way to fill a few minutes at the end of a session.
The website thecolor.com has several online coloring pages, such as ice skating, hockey, snowboarding, and skiing.
This 8-pair memory game matches words with pictures while this 17-pair memory game covers many wintertime experiences in Switzerland, including many sporting activities. FYI- you can modify the games to have fewer matches!
Winter Sports-Themed Activities for Older Students
These winter sports passages include real photos and a range of activities. They can be used with older students to target comparing and contrasting, formulating sentences using theme vocabulary, using a variety of verb tenses and conjunctions, identifying synonyms and antonyms, and practicing articulation. The passages are perfect to pair with YouTube videos (to see the sports in action) and the Winter Olympics website!
This article on ReadWorks discusses how to exercise outside despite the colder temperatures in winter months. It also discusses the many benefits of being outside and active in the winter.
This Newsela article shares an Olympic bobsledder's initiative to bring diversity and inclusion to The Winter Olympics and winter sports in general.
This Newsela passage may be short, but it's also very relevant to the topic of winter sports safety during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Regardless of how much snow is (or isn't) on the ground where you live in the winter, your students will love this theme! Forget a week's worth of lesson plans, these activities might have you covered for the whole month! If you want more themed speech therapy sessions, check out this FREE Google spreadsheet or these other themed lesson plan blog posts!
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