Speech Therapy: Snowmen

The original pin. Source: dolvinartknight.blogspot.com via Laura on Pinterest

The Pin: A view of a snowman from the top. He could be melting. The pin came from an art teacher, but when I saw it, I thought, "labeling... sequencing... /s/ blends... prepositions...". The description when I pinned it said:

love it... a new perspective

The styrofoam snowman for my younger
students - we built it and looked
at it from the front, side and top. My model
is at the back.

The Good: A break from the typical snowmen crafts, but easy enough to do with a speech group where the focus is on language and artic and not on the art. Easy to put together. And because I think kids need objects, on Monday night, I bought the styrofoam balls at Hobby Lobby, gathered buttons, zebra-striped fabric, and dry spaghetti at home. However, you will probably want to plan ahead more than I did.

6:40 a.m. Tuesday morning: "Dang, I forgot to make a snowman template! I've got to use my circle cutter!"

6:41 a.m.: "I don't have time for this!"

6:42 a.m.: (grabbed bowls and cups from the kitchen, traced four circles, freehanded a scarf on one circle, and freehanded arms)

The high-tech tools I used to create a snowman template

The parts

6:50 a.m.: Left for school.

7:00 a.m.: Thankfully, the stars aligned, and the copy machine worked.

7:10-7:45 a.m.: Morning duty

7:50 a.m.: Made an example

8:00 a.m.: Saw my first 5th-grade group.

My 2nd-5th graders were able to look at my example and know what to do, so I was able to focus on their goals. K-1st needed more instruction, which tied in nicely with their language goals. The snowman also worked well with my Functional Academics students.

Bonuses: this is a good activity for social goals. Students had to share, take turns, and ask for items from other students. Also good for comparative and superlatives.

After the students described their snowmen on video, they
could decorate their snowmen any way they wanted to.
These are the Ninja snowmen from my
afternoon 3rd-graders.

Before the video

The Bad: Nothing, really. I guess the only thing would be that after doing this activity with 50 students, I actually felt relief after the last one.

Summary: I loved this and would do it again. The melting snowman kept the attention of K-5 students - and how often does that happen? - and is easy to adapt to speech therapy groups.