Smashingly Good Speech: Transportation and Community Helpers Speech and Language Therapy Plans

For the next couple of weeks, I will be focusing on transportation themed activities in therapy. I often include community helpers into my transportation unit, as I find they go hand in hand. It's hard NOT to talk about firefighters when you are playing with a firetruck! I love doing this unit since most of my kiddos are highly motivated by it. Here are some of the activities we will be doing in the upcoming weeks.

Articulation

We'll be doing this Sensory Bag Speech Transportation activity with some of my younger patients and ones that need the sensory component it provides.

Another fun, interactive articulation activity that I like to use with my younger kids is this Fireman Interactive Articulation and Phonology Activity. They love getting to use a squirt bottle!

My bigger kids love these origami articulation activities from Speech Therapy By Courtney Bragg. They are great. They keep hands busy, provide great targets, and are easy to send home for additional practice.

You can find the planes here and the boats here.

These Articulation Racing Mats by Panda Speech Therapy have been well loved by all ages that I see!

Since I also add in community helpers during this unit, I like to use this Magnifying Glass Speech activity. This kids love pretending to be detectives and using the magnifying glass.

Language

My go to for language is my Transportation Speech and Language Unit. It has everything I need for pronouns, verb tenses, concepts, wh questions, listening comprehension, categories, object functions, inferring, etc. Most of it is print and go, making it super easy to prep.

This Pronoun Police Game is great for more extensive practice on pronouns.

And I also love to lay out language and/or articulation cards to make a road. This kids can practice their targets as they make the road, then again when they drive on it. You can truly target almost any skill with this activity - and you probably already have what you need to do it!

Of course, I also do a ton of play based speech therapy. Here are some of my favorite activities for that!

This Melissa and Doug Parking Garage (affiliate link) is awesome for tons of things. We can do in/out, up/down, top/bottom, middle, front/back, etc… It’s also great for counting, color matching/labeling, and open/close. Many of my kids need help putting them back in, giving me so many natural opportunities to request help.

I also love a good toy bus (affiliate link). It's a great companion for singing "Wheels on the Bus." I also been combine this toy bus with animals for a fun way to work imitating environmental/animal sounds. We sing wheels on the bus the regular way, then add in the animals! “The cow on the bus goes moo moo moo….” It’s always interesting to see how my littles adapt to the change in a familiar activity!

This VTech Ramp (affiliate link) and cars get a lot of use in my therapy room. It's simple to put together and you can use it with only half of the pieces to make it easier for younger kids to use.

We work on spatial concepts, fast vs. slow, making environmental noises, requesting more/help, stop vs. go, etc. I am finding that the possibilities are literally endless with this if you follow the child's lead!

These flashcards from eSpeechy are great to combine with any game or activity for additional practice. I love the real pictures!

I like to pair small vehicles with my Language Prompts for Mini Objects cards to do more structured, yet still play based, practice. You can target pronouns, plurals, noun verb agreement, object functions, categories, colors, spatial concepts, and more with this packet.

I also love to incorporate puzzles and magnet boards in my units. Melissa and Doug has lots of great transportation puzzles (affiliate link) for various skill levels. I particularly love this one, as I can use the pieces as manipulatives for other activities as well. This magnetic Wheels At Work Puzzle is a little difficult, but fun! I can't seem to find a link for it anywhere though.

I've also accumulated a lot of little vehicles, trains, planes, boats, motorcycles, etc throughout my years of work. I've purchased some new, but many came from parents. I simply sent a note home with my families telling them what I was looking for and the vehicles started rolling in! You'd be surprised how many parents are just dying to get rid of some of their kids' "junk!" :)

Social Skills

To target social skills, we often put on our detective hats and play this Manners Detective Game.

This game is great for 2nd grade and up.

Books

I love a good book! Here are some that I use with my older kids. Several of them are older, so I don't have a link to them. I linked the ones that I can find below. All are affiliate links.