Winter is often a gloomy and challenging time for children despite the anticipation of snow days, hot chocolate, and Santa’s reindeer. After spending countless hours indoors, kids may feel stressed, frustrated, anxious–and even a little crazy! Fortunately, during the happiest season of all, educators and therapists offering pediatric therapy services have the valuable chance to include festive winter-themed activities in their practices.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, toys encourage interactive learning and skill development through lively interactions, hands-on engagement, and imaginative play. Specifically, speech-language pathologists can improve their therapy sessions by incorporating music and games to engage students through fun activities.
From kid-approved games like winter bingo to informative describing activities, winter-themed resources are an exciting way to add creativity and enthusiasm to any classroom while cultivating essential language, speech, and communication skills.
Today, our speech therapy plan experts want to share and discuss our top picks for seasonal speech therapy games that will help your students learn and develop new skills–while still having fun! Without further ado, here are sixteen of our favorite speech therapy winter games that are guaranteed to keep your students engaged and warm during the coldest season.
1. Little People
Since children learn considerably through play, “Little People” is a favorite among teachers, parents, and educational therapists. A famous Fisher-Price brand with a comprehensive array of games, “Little People” offers winter-themed versions like “Musical Christmas Train,” “A Christmas Story,” “Disney Frozen Elsa & Friends,” and “Nativity.”
These interactive toys, which are reasonably priced, are excellent resources to improve students’ target skills, such as following instructions, completing social routines, building vocabulary, learning positional concepts and functions, creating categories, and more.
2. Elf on the Shelf
Speech therapists can’t seem to stop raving about this classic book that was remade into a winter toy: the “Elf on the Shelf”, who is Santa’s Little Helper–with quite an adventurous spirit! Teachers and educational therapists can plan various entertaining and hilarious learning activities, such as playing hide-and-seek to find the “Elf”, which will be hidden in a new classroom location daily.
The “Elf on the Shelf” is also a practical educational resource to use during speech therapy sessions. For example, speech therapists can have students practice using positional concepts, descriptor words, and communication skills to describe the “Elf’s” precise location and write creative stories about how or why he is hiding.
3. Don’t Break the Ice
A childhood favorite from Hasbro Gaming, “Don’t Break the Ice” is a classic toy perfect for keeping kids occupied during the winter season. When playing this enthralling game, students can tap out ice blocks one at a time while keeping the polar bear afloat, and to win, the polar bear must not sink.
“Don’t Break The Ice” is a superb game to use during speech therapy sessions because it cultivates essential speech and communication skills, including turn-taking, social interaction, critical thinking, listening, and asking and responding to questions.
4. Polar Bear ABC
A mentally stimulating game recommended for three to five-year-olds by speech therapists, Cranium’s “Polar Bear ABC” gives children the chance to select a word card and then take alternating turns to fish for letters.
To play, a child first catches a letter and determines if it is included in the card word’s spelling. If so, they place the letter on the word card, and if not, the letter is tossed in the “cast out pond.” Since all of the game’s participants are trying to catch letters to spell the same word, the child who catches all of the word’s letters first wins!
5. Arctic TOOB
Featuring cute figurines of arctic animals, the “Arctic TOOB” includes a harp seal, husky, caribou, arctic rabbit, killer whale, walrus, arctic fox, beluga whale, igloo, and polar bear. A fun and educational toy from Safari Ltd., the “Arctic TOOB” provides plenty of information about each arctic animal and the people who have acclimated to extraordinarily cold climates.
Through imaginative play and informative discussions, children can further their communication and language skills by learning more about their frigid friends. Students can achieve this by asking questions, creating storylines, describing animals’ characteristics, sharing key arctic facts, and more.
6. Don’t Rock the Boat
Calling all seafarers and arrr-ticulation aficianados! PlayMonster’s “Don’t Rock the Boat” is a kid-approved game for pirate lovers that is exemplary for winter-themed lessons. Children take alternating turns to balance pirate objects on a ship, such as pirate penguins, a treasure chest, an anchor, a canon, a ship wheel, an octopus, and a crab.
However, if a child rocks the boat and sends the pirate pieces flying overboard, they become a “landlubber.” An outstanding kill-and-action game, “Don’t Rock the Boat” refines children’s skills like balancing objects, collaborative problem-solving, teamwork, and social interaction.
7. Slice and Bake Wooden Cookie Play Food Set
Since winter is the season of festive treats and holiday goodies, this assortment of wooden play food from Melissa & Doug is perfect for kids with a sweet tooth. The colorful set has twelve cuttable cookies and toppings as well as a spatula, a knife, a cookie sheet, and a kitchen mitt.
Through playing with this toy set, children can enhance their fine motor skills, understand number concepts, learn positional concepts, and follow instructions by pretending to bake, decorate, and share cookies. Speech therapists can use these cookies to ask open-ended questions and use words like “more,” “some,” “one,” “less,” “all,” and “many.”
8. Felt Brownies
A sweet toy for chocolate lovers, GreerTW’s lifelike set of mix-and-match felt play brownies are sold in four flavors: plain, chocolate frosting, chocolate frosting and nuts, and chocolate frosting, nuts, and M&M’s.
Created with recycled environment-friendly felt and stuffed with foam, these handsewn plush brownies are an excellent way to refine essential skills like language development, sequencing, and practicing social routines.
9. Christmas Cookies
A perfect holiday gift and Christmas stocking stuffer, this holiday-themed cookie plate set from Imagination Generation includes nine wooden toys, such as a festive box, a candy cane, a gingerbread man and woman, and more!
Children can advance their problem-solving and fine motor skills through imaginative play by pretending to make Christmas cookies for Santa with this festive food set. Embellished with water-based paints and made of solid woodcuts, these cookies will be the ultimate addition to your gingerbread holiday decorations.
10. Holiday Christmas Tree Wooden Chunky Puzzle
Another holiday-themed game from Melissa & Doug, this screen-free wooden puzzle includes thirteen pieces that are thick enough for little hands to hold. Children can play with this toy in two ways: by putting puzzle pieces on the board or standing them upright.
This puzzle is entertaining and can also be used during therapy sessions for imaginative play. Designed to inspire hands-on engagement and pretend play, this chunky puzzle promotes hand-eye coordination, matching, problem-solving, critical thinking, and fine motor skills.
11. Frozen Roller Toys
A holiday favorite of educators and therapists, these roller toys from Mattel celebrate winter’s excitement and the snowy kingdom in the timeless Disney movie, Frozen. Children can slide around beloved characters like Olaf, Elsa, and Anna in the snow or on ice with the toys’ state-of-the-art rolling mechanism.
By rewriting creative storylines and reenacting movie scenes, children can improve their communication, language, and speech skills by writing original scenes, sharing their stories with teachers and classmates, and describing each Frozen character and their exhilarating snowy adventures.
12. Frozen 2 Matching Game
A kid-approved Frozen 2 toy, this matching game from Wonder Forge is exceptional for targeting key skills like increasing attention to detail, classifying objects grouped with identical or similar items, expanding vocabulary, and improving memory and concentration. Although there are multiple versions of Frozen and Frozen 2 toys, these icy matching games remain among our favorites because of their simplicity and ability to engage students.
13. Gingerbread House
A customizable “Gingerbread House” from Easy Playhouse includes winter friends like “Teddy Gummy Bears” and the “Gingerbread Cookie Friend.” This life-size fort is the ideal gift for artistic children who want to bring a cardboard home to life by using colorful markers, crayons, paint, and stickers.
The “Gingerbread House” allows children to practice speech and language skills by creating stories, role-playing, reading books to friends inside the house, and performing theatrical skits.
14. Trains & Cranes Super Tower
Superb for train lovers of all ages, this multi-level playset from Thomas & Friends impressively stands over two feet tall and includes a die-cast “Percy Engine,” a motorized “Thomas Engine,” “Harold the Helicopter,” and four cargo crates for unloading and loading.
The action-packed toy features familiar locations and characters from the esteemed television show, including “Tidmouth Sheds,” “Brendam Docks,” “Cassia,” “Carly Crane,” and “Cranky the Crane.” “Trains & Cranes Super Tower” enables children to practice significant speech skills like turn-taking, collaborative teamwork, imaginative play, and more.
15. Farmer’s Market Color Sorting Set
A multipurpose play food set from Learning Resources, this bestselling sorting set contains five baskets, labeling stickers, an activity guide, and thirty realistic farm-fresh produce pieces, which include twenty-five foods in five unique colors.
A popular addition to any speech therapist’s learning toolkit, the “Farmer’s Market Color Sorting Set” develops vital skills in children like naming and sorting colors, expanding vocabulary, learning about new foods, and playing imaginatively.
16. Winter Snowball Building Set
This iconic playset is a fun-packed winter toy from LEGO that includes 149 pieces, including a snowball catapult, sled-launching hill, buildable snow fort, snowman, and more. Children can reenact numerous winter scenes through imaginative play, teamwork, role-playing, and story creation. While kids of all ages can enjoy endless days of wintry fun with this toy set, “Winter Snowball Fight” is recommended for children aged seven months and up.
In conclusion, we hope this article convinces you that speech therapy can be practical, functional, and even fun throughout the snowiest season. These sixteen winter-themed speech therapy games will strengthen children’s speech, communication, and language skills.
During your next speech therapy session, we suggest using any of these versatile winter games–and if you’re feeling imaginative, step outside the box to create your own speech therapy materials. Soon, your students will reach all of their speech goals while discovering that the learning possibilities are endless–the ideal way to ring in the holly jolly season!
What are your favorite winter games and activities for speech therapy? Please let us know in the comments below!
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