Do you need ideas on what themes you can do in April during your speech therapy sessions? I fully believe that using themes in speech therapy allows the kids to stay motivated and engaged during each session instead of doing the same games over and over again. It also allows you, as a speech therapist, to enjoy the sessions just as much as the kids do with new and exciting materials.
Below is my list of themes that I like to do during the month of April, along with a few books and activities that you can do for each one. I hope that this gives you some ideas on what you can do in your sessions this month!
What themes can you do in April in your speech therapy sessions?
April has a few holidays that you can incorporate into your therapy sessions along with a few other fun themes. My favorite include:
- Picnic
- Easter
- Earth Day
- Bugs
- Bunnies
- Birds
Picnic Theme
I love doing a picnic theme in my therapy sessions during the month of April because that is when the weather is perfect to actually have a picnic! I love using play food during this theme to have actual objects to use and play with during the sessions.
My favorite books to use for this theme include A Perfect Picnic, The Ants Go Marching, and The Bears’ Picnic. If you end up using play food in your sessions, you can incorporate an iSpy game to work on descriptions or a guessing game. If you don’t have play food, you can easily print off pictures of different food items online.
You can check out my Picnic Lesson Plan and my free Food Workbook for activities to use during this theme. Both have language and articulation materials included in them.
Easter Theme
With Easter happening during the month of April, this is the best time to do this theme. My favorite activity to do with my kids is painting Easter eggs. You can also make a fun sensory bin that has the plastic Easter eggs in it with different vocabulary or articulation cards inside of them. To make it even more fun, you can put candy or stickers in a few of them for the kids to find.
My favorite Easter themed books are How to Catch the Easter Bunny, The Night Before Easter, and Pete the Cat: Big Easter Adventure.
You can check out my Easter Weekly Lesson Plan that is packed full of book companion worksheets for one of the books above and many other fun activities!
Earth Day Theme
Earth Day is celebrated on April 22 so I always like to incorporate this theme when I can. I always think that it’s a great idea to let our kids know how important it is to do what we can to protect our planet.
My favorite books for this holiday include Anywhere Farm, Kaia and the Bees, and Alba and the Ocean Cleanup.
A fun activity that you can do for this theme is to get some seeds/dirt and use recycled bottles to plant your own veggies or flowers. You can also create a simple scavenger hunt to go on outside where you stop and name certain items/describe them. Both of these would work great with any following directions goals, too.
If you are interested in using this theme during your session, you can check out my no prep and printable Earth Day Weekly Lesson Plan.
Bugs Theme
With the start of warmer weather in April means that we will start seeing more and more bugs. So many of my kids love when I do this theme in therapy because they love bugs. It’s easy to make a fun sensory bin of sand and add different types of toy bugs into it. You can even go online and print off pictures of bugs to put in there if you don’t have toy bugs.
My favorite books for this theme are An Ant’s Day Off, The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Ten Little Ladybugs.
If you are wanting a lesson plan that is no prep and includes pre-made vocabulary cards and book companion activities for one of the books above, you can check out my Bug Lesson Plan.
You can also check out my blog post on my Speech Therapy Push-In Activities. I talk about a fun bug themed bundle that is great to use on the go!
Bunnies Theme
If you don’t want to do an Easter theme in your therapy sessions, you can always look into doing a regular bunny theme. It would be the best of both worlds!
Some of my favorite bunny themed books are The Velveteen Rabbit and The Tale of Peter Rabbit. A fun activity that you can do is create a bunny out of a brown paper bag or paper plate and then “feed” the bunny articulation cards or any other cards that target the goals you need.
Birds Theme
Sticking with an animal theme, another fun one is birds. Some bird books that you can incorporate are Don’t Let Pigeon Drive the Bus, Whoever Heard of a Flying Bird?, and Why Should I Walk? I Can Fly! A fun activity that you can easily throw together is printing off different pictures of birds online and using them in a description activity or sorting activity based on certain characteristics.
April Speech Therapy Lesson Plan Bundle
If you are wanting to incorporate more than one of the themes above into your therapy sessions, then take a look at my April Speech Therapy Lesson Plan Bundle. There are 4 themes included with this bundle (Picnic, Easter, Earth Day, and Bugs), totaling to over 500 pages of materials.
Each one of these lesson plans includes book companion activities, a language scene, and activities for both language and articulation. For more information on my themed lesson plans, you can take a look at the guide here.
I hope that you have gotten some ideas on April themes and activities you can do during your speech therapy sessions. Let me know down below in the comments if you do any of these and which one was your favorite!
Happy Planning!
