Seasonal Activities to use Throughout the Year
Do your students always ask you to do something fun in your therapy sessions on a holiday or right before a vacation break? At the high school level, it’s not that easy to pull out a game and start playing. We need to make sure that whatever fun activity we choose still aligns to our students’ goals. Seasonal activities are the perfect type of fun that your students are looking for to change up their sessions.
We have a ton of seasonal and holiday activities that we pull out every year because our students love them. They love them so much that they ask for more when another holiday comes around. Seasonal activities also gives you a break from a session and can be used during any season – winter, summer, spring, and fall.
CAPTION IT!
Let your students bring their love for social media into the therapy room. Target oral language, receptive language, and expressive language by creating a caption for a social media post. Use strategies to help students fill in an Instagram template about an image.
- Create a caption: A caption is no more than a sentence or two about a photo. An Instagram caption is similar to writing a hook in an essay. When writing a hook, you want to grab the reader’s attention so they keep reading. When writing a caption, you want to engage the reader, that way they stop to read your Instagram post.
- Add hashtags: A hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by a hash sign (#) to identify content on a specific topic. It’s a way to categorize a post. Create multiple hashtags or keywords to categorize the image.
- Write a comment: A comment is a reaction to what someone else posts online. This is similar to a conversation you may have. How would you respond to the post? Make sure the comment is respectful, meaningful, on topic, and concise.
WRITING CHOICE BOARD
Writing choice boards provide students with multiple writing prompts to choose from (or for you to assign). Each board includes 9 different writing prompts, as well as graphic organizers that can be given to your students to differentiate the lesson. Here are some writing activities to choose from:
- Adding detail using the 5 senses
- Unfreeze the Scene using inference skills to make predictions
- Narrative writing to create a story
- And so many more!
WOULD YOU RATHER
Would you rather questions are a great way to elicit oral language. Students are presented with two statements and they must choose which option they prefer. To elaborate on their choice, they must provide a reason to support their choice. You can even turn this into a writing activity and have students write out their response. Here are our favorite would you rather questions for each season:
- Fall: Would you rather go apple picking or pumpkin picking?
- Winter: Would you rather have wet pants or wet gloves when playing in the snow?
- Spring: Would you rather have fake grass you don’t need to mow or real grass you need to mow every week?
- Summer: Would you rather have a water balloon fight or a water gun fight?
Click here for your FREE would you rather questions for all holidays and seasons!
If you love these seasonal and holiday inspired activities, be sure to check out the seasonal category in our TPT store for even more activities. Leave a comment and tell us what fun and engaging activities you are using in your sessions on a holiday!
