Beach Themed Speech Therapy Activities for Summer
Whether you’re an SLP living on the coast or that landlocked life (that's me), the beach is a hot summer theme for speech therapy. In fact, speech therapy sessions is one of my favorite places to enjoy the beach. What? I know, I’m weird. Sand is just so… sandy 😜
But like the ocean horizon itself, the possibilities with a beach theme are endless! From sandcastles to boats to ocean animals, so many of our students’ high-interest topics fall within the beach and ocean theme. Not to mention all of the vocabulary and language concepts!
Beach Themed PDF Activities
Here is a digital (i.e. download and go!) PDF to target several goals including past tense verbs, story inferencing, antonyms, articulation, and more with your preschool and early elementary students.
You could also take a field trip under the sea! Learn about oceans, look at real photos of ocean animals, and elicit tons of language with this colorful PDF activity. It’s like a virtual field trip to an aquarium... and perfect for targeting multiple goals at once!
Beach Themed Boom Card Activities
This summer comprehension and inferencing Boom Card deck includes a couple of ocean-themed passages that make targeting those language goals easy with elementary students. Why? No more digging for shells, I mean reading passages before the session!
Use this ocean scene creator Boom Card deck to let your students think creatively while practicing their articulation. An open-ended card (without target words) even allows you to use the same activity for language students too!
Don’t miss this FREE Boom Card deck that targets answering wh- questions about the beach. The visuals are super helpful for some students in teaching the types of wh- questions, and the colorful pictures are engaging too!
Beach Themed Books for Speech Therapy
Harry By the Sea by Gene Zion
How To Code a Sandcastle by Josh Funk
The Sandcastle That Lola Built by Megan Maynor
The Mermaid by Jan Brett
Mister Seahorse and A House for Hermit Crab by Eric Carle
The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister
Beach Themed Websites and Games
Aqua Friends is a puzzle activity on ABCYa.com that is fun for elementary students, even if you use it as a warm-up while students arrive or to fill the last few minutes of the speech therapy session.
Toy Theater’s virtual fishing game allows students to try and catch a fish while avoiding the jellyfish. The website's sticker activity also includes an ocean background and tons of ocean-themed digital stickers that can be added to it. Oh, the language therapy possibilities of such an open-ended activity!
Sandcastle is a Daniel Tiger activity on PBS Kids that gives students a chance to build their own virtual sandcastle! If you're doing in-person therapy (and feeling very brave), you could bring in real sand for your therapy sessions.
If you like to have a couple of coloring pages relevant to the theme, check out these beach pictures on thecolor.com that can be colored digitally or printed.
For the teletherapists— Having a game of digital memory on standby is a lifesaver for filling extra time or waiting for late arrivals. This one uses real photos and works great for our beach theme, and here's one for ocean animals too.
For students working on inferencing or multiple meanings, these ocean and beach jokes from Glow Worm Books make for a fun activity!
Beach Themed Videos for Speech Therapy
This simple video is great for preschoolers, as it shows videos of children playing at the beach and talking about swimming, finding seashells and hermit crabs, and building sandcastles. Another fun preschool activity is this virtual field trip to the beach, which talks about items to bring for some fun in the sun.
For slightly older students, this National Geographic video teaches about the oceans of our world. It answers questions such as, "Why is ocean water salty?" and "How is the ocean changing due to climate change?".... perfect for targeting comprehension, inferencing, vocabulary in context, and tons more! This National Geographic Kids video discusses the camera that scuba divers can use to get photos and videos of ocean animals such as sharks!
This informational video compares the different oceans of the world, while this one highlights some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. Students love to share which one they'd choose to visit, and why!
Beach Themed Activities for Older Students
Even our big kids can have fun with beach-themed activities! I love to find articles and passages that put an interesting spin on the theme. This one from Newsala is about the danger that plastic poses to the ocean. This website resource from National Geographic Kids discusses beaches and even includes underlined vocabulary words.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record here, I love doing funny fill-in-the-blank stories with older kids. This one is part of my summer packet of Speech Libs and talks about the biggest type of shark in the world.
As you can see, I've paired it with a live webcam from the Georgia Aquarium!
This personality quiz on National Geographic Kids aims to determine which ocean animal you are, providing another light-hearted way to incorporate the beach and ocean theme.
Life, no, speech therapy is a beach with these ready-to-go resources to help you target speech and language goals across your caseload. Just bookmark your favorite beach-themed activities (or use this Google spreadsheet so it’s ready to go for next year) and there’s no doubt that you’ll be making waves in your speech therapy sessions!
NOTE: Several of the links in this post go to websites for which I have no affiliation. The links are provided for your convenience only. This post does not signify endorsement of any of the above websites or resources (other than those I have created on TpT and/or Boom Learning), and I have no responsibility or liability for any of the other content or information shared in this post.
