Jungle Animal Speech Therapy Plans

 For the next two weeks, I will be doing a jungle animal theme with my older patients. As I was gathering up the materials, I thought I would share my plans with you! 

First of all, I love some play based therapy with my littles. I know it's nearly impossible to implement "themed therapy" with my 0-3 patients, but I will often make sure to use the toys that accompany my theme with them. My Little People Zoo set is perfect for this! I also have another set of animals and a jungle for my older kids. Here is another great set (affiliate link) that my son has. It has a ton of variety and accessories. We love it! 

Books are a must in therapy with all ages. Below are some of my favorites. 

I especially love "Who's Next?" It's great for inferring, describing, memory building, spatial concepts, vocabulary building, "wh" questions, and so much more. Here is an example of one of it's pages. 

I also use non-fiction articles and books from the library about jungle animals to work on those reading, listening, and comprehension skills with my older patients. 

I use worksheets with my older kids and for homework. I use this packet from my TpT store for the jungle animal unit. 

It has worksheets for jungle/zoo, farm, and ocean animals. I get a lot of use out of it, as I actually do those themes separately throughout the year. It has activities and worksheets for concepts, syntax, vocabulary, social skills, etc. 

I also love magnet boards. I use these to target articulation, vocabulary, spatial concepts, wh questions, describing, quantity concepts, etc. I use these with a wide variety of ages - as long as the kid isn't putting the magnets in their mouth, they can usually participate in some way. Plus they are easy to transport between buildings. I will put the magnet selection on a cookie sheet to help keep track of the little pieces. This is the one (affiliate link) I use for my jungle animal theme. 

I also have a few other jungle/zoo materials I have accumulated from other TpT'ers. My favorite little booklet, "All About The Zoo" is from a bundle of push in therapy resources by Kristine Lamb. I also love the picture scene bundles from Katrina Bevan on TpT -there are several that would apply to a jungle/zoo unit. 

I use the PECS symbols from Boardmaker + Peekaboo Safari app to work on labeling/matching animals and AAC. We use phrases like "I see.....," "it's a...." etc. I also use this app with my kiddos that are using more advanced communication systems. 

For articulation, I use this sensory bag speech resource. It's a fun way to incorporate sensory needs into articulation therapy. This resource also has a blank mat that I like to use for vocabulary building. It's also another fun activity to pair with AAC. 

Before sensory bins were banned (dang COVID) at my facility. I also did sensory bins with easter grass. We were able to add animals, articulation cards, etc to make fun activities for speech and language. 

I will also pair articulation cards with fun games like Tumbling Monkeys (affiliate link). 

Or a target + a monkey slingshot. You could also use a fun jungle animal ball popper. I made this target in grad school - it has definitely seen better days! :) I use it with the ants from the "Ants in the Pants" game, wind up toys, sling shot toys, ball popper toys, and little plastic jumping frogs and bunnies. Basically, the child has to do the number of trials labeled on the target based on where they land. You can pair it with literally any card deck or worksheet to turn it into a themed activity. 

That's about it for my Jungle Animals Unit! I hope you found something you can use in your own therapy room. Thanks for stopping by!