14 Great Ideas for Shark Week in Preschool Speech Therapy

Need some ideas for Shark Week to plan for awesome summer speech therapy activities?

I’ve rounded up preschool shark books, games, and easy craft ideas for Shark Week, plus a free shark activity for you to download.

Shark week is in July, of course.  However, if your therapy sessions are on pause because school’s out in July, grab these shark week ideas for the next time you’re feeling sharky in speech. Anytime works for your shark week. I do my week in May and make it last for several sessions. Plan some shark speech therapy fun and watch your student’s engagement soar.

 So, true confession…

I can’t watch Jaws. Or any of those movies where people get eaten. I hide my eyes and cover my ears with scary movies. But I love Shark Week! Sharks and an ocean theme equal tons of language opportunities for your speech therapy room.

Children are fascinated with the ocean, especially sharks.

Well, really, who isn’t? Most of my kiddos have never actually been to the shore, but love talking about mysterious creatures of the deep. Scary things. With big teeth. Huge whales, ferocious sharks, and colorful fish, too.  It’s okay, though, we keep it not-so-scary for my preschoolers and kindergarteners. Still plenty of fun.

Music and movement ideas

Baby Shark by Super Simple Songs. If you want a fun sound-loaded song for littles, show the video and sing along with Baby Shark!

There’s Baby Shark, Papa Shark, Mama Shark, and even Grandma and Grandpa Shark. We stand up and pretend to swim (and chomp); it really helps to get the wiggles out before sitting down to read!

Warning: Baby Shark is one of those tunes that gets stuck in your head. Know what I mean? When you wake up at 2 am and the tune is still on an automatic loop in your brain. Over and over and…how do you make that stop? But that’s another topic, so…

Five Little Sharks by KidsTV is a countdown song like The Five Little Ducks. Five little sharks go swimming one day, down in the bay, where all the sharks play. Mommy shark calls them, but only four little sharks come back, and so on.

We’re Going on a Shark Hunt by the Kiboomers Songs For Kids is an ocean version of the familiar “Bear Hunt” song. I love all the verbs you can target with this style of song and it’s really fun to do the motions with your children.

Read one of these great preschool shark picture books.

1. Smiley Shark by Ruth Galloway is a favorite of mine.
If you haven’t read this adorable book, you should! Smiley Shark is a friendly guy who just wants someone to play with. All the other sea creatures are scared of him and swim away, which makes poor Smiley very lonely and sad. But things change when the other fish are in danger, and Smiley Shark saves the day.

This book is sound-loaded with /sm/, Initial sh and final /k/ because it repeats “Smiley” and ‘shark.” The children really relate to Smiley when he feels lonely with no one to play with, and we got lots of discussions going. This book is full of fun ocean creatures, a shark hero, and a lovely message about not judging a book by its cover. See Smiley Shark read aloud by Give Us a Story.

Goals to target:

• articulation: /sm/, initial sh and final /k/
• rhyming words
• social skills/ friendship
• feelings/emotion words
• problem/ solution
• ocean animal vocabulary

2. Shark in the Park by Nick Sharrat.
A little boy, Timothy Pope, goes to the park with his telescope and thinks he sees a shark through it. He yells, “There’s a shark in the park!” But it turns out to be something else.  False alarm. This happens several times until he realizes there are no sharks in the park. Or are there?

This simple story has rhyme and repetitive text, which is great for retelling, and we make a telescope with our hands to look through as we tell it! You can listen to Shark in the Park read online.

Goals to target:

• articulation: initial sh and final /ks/ blend
• rhyming words
• sequencing
• story-retelling

3. Clark the Shark by Bruce Hale.
Clark goes to school, but Clark is too loud, too wild, and just too much shark. Until he learns to stay cool… It’s a great story for talking about social skills, self-regulation, and taking someone else’s perspective.  Listen to Clark the Shark read online by actor Chris Pine.

Clark the Shark is one of the great storytime videos by Storyline Online. If you haven’t checked out their YouTube channel, you should. You’ll find wonderful videos of books read by actors, so the readings are beautifully done. It features storybook readings by Lily Tomlin, Sarah Silverman, and Ernest Borgnine reading Rainbow Fish, to name a few.

Goals to target:

• articulation: /kl/ l-blend, final /k/, Initial sh
• social skills

4. The Three Little Fish and The Big Bad Shark by Ken Geist
This book is a fun takeoff on The Three Little Pigs and repeats “Little fish, little fish, let me come in!”
It has plenty of repetition of the words shark, fish, and “crunch” for articulation practice and the familiar format is great for participation.

Goals to target:

• Articulation: initial /f/, initial /l/, final ch, and sh
• sequencing
• story re-telling

5. Nugget and Fang by Michael Slack.

Nugget is a little minnow, and Fang is a great big shark. The two are the best of friends, and they have lots of fun together. Then… school starts and Nugget learns that sharks can eat minnows! At first, he can’t believe it’s true, but then he gets a little scared. Fang tries everything he can think of to prove to Nugget (and his new minnow friends) that he’s not scary, but nothing works until… the minnows get in trouble and Fang saves them!

Check out Nugget and Fang read aloud on YouTube by Bumble Kids

Goals to target:

• Problem-solving
• Social skills/friendship
• Feelings/emotion words
• Spatial concepts: over, under, around

Arts and crafts ideas for Shark Week or your ocean theme

When you make crafts in speech therapy, be sure to get lots of repetitions of articulation words by having the children repeat their words in blocks of 5 or 10. (Do you want the yellow fish or the blue fish? Tell me “fish” 10 times. Here’s your yellow fish.) Hold up ten fingers, and count down as they say their words.

Work on requesting, sentence structure, and MLU (sentence length) as the children request each item needed and describe what they’re doing.

1. Shiny Shark Craft: Paint tin foil with tempera and swirl the paint while wet. When dry, top it with blue construction paper with a shark cutout- so cool! (We pre-cut those ourselves with a template, but it might just make a great project for your upper elementary kiddos to do for you. Kids love to help out little ones.) We added a “Shiny Shark” label to ours.

You can get plenty of articulation”sh” practice talking about sharks. Where do they live? What do they eat?  How do they move? What animals are smaller? Larger?

2. Thumbprint Fish  Practice /f/ and “sh” while making thumbprint fish. Do you think we need to add a shark under the boat?

3. Puppets: Make a Shark Puppet or

4. Shark Cootie Catcher: Get this free printable by Easy Peasy and Fun.

5. Cupcake Liner Shark craft by I Heart Crafty Things.

6. Toothy Shark Craft: Draw a shark like the one above on a white paper as a template. Next, use a copier to print it on blue paper. Glue on the teeth- with initial “sh” words, of course! If you’re not sure you want to try your hand at drawing one, I created a free printable shark for you.

Sensory bin ideas for Shark Week

Give your sharks a bath! I think a little soap in the water is not only fun and bubbly but keeps those little hands sanitary, too. If you want to find more waterplay ideas, check out this post: April Showers! Why You Should Include Waterplay in Speech and Language Therapy.

Water Beads are always fun, too.  I love the slippery texture, and so do the kids. Use blue and white beads and have your sharks swim through them. Which shark is below the beads? Is he diving, chomping, or swimming?

Play a Group Game

Baby Shark: Play this game like London Bridge if you have a larger group of children (5 or more would work). Two children hold hands and raise their arms up to be the “jaws.” The other children are the fish. They make a circle and walk under the jaws while you sing to the London Bridge tune:

Baby shark is hungry now
Hungry now
Hungry now
Baby shark is hungry now
Snap, he got me!

Of course, you lower your hands and catch a child when you sing “snap!” And guess what? you’ve just practiced /sn/, /k/ , /h/ and “sh”. I love repetitive activities!

There are plenty more great activities in this Smiley Shark Book Companion:

If you’d like more ready-to-go summer speech therapy activities for Shark Week,  you may want to check out my Smiley Shark Book Companion. It has activities for little ones and some for older students too, so you can easily use it with PK-2nd grade.

All my kids love the Fishbowl Frenzy game. Older kids roll the dice to fill their fishbowl; little ones just get to pick a card for each response. This game is open-ended, so it works with any goal you are targeting.

We sorted ocean animals and jungle animals with the sorting mats. They really enjoyed using dot markers to dab the number of syllables in all those fishy words!

I created WH questions and Yes/No question cards to work on listening comprehension. Other activities for this adorable storybook include sequencing, articulation for /l/, sh, plurals, rhyming, inference, and prediction.

I hope you found a few new ideas for Shark Week in summer speech therapy.

If you have any favorite shark activities or if you try some of the ones I’ve shared, I would love to hear about it. Tag me if you post on social media, @speechsprouts

Don’t forget to pin this post to your Pinterest boards if you see ideas you’d like to try. That makes it easy to find these ideas for Shark Week later. You’ll find even more ocean-themed ideas on my Ocean, Shark, and Fish Pinterest board.

Looking for more ocean-themed activities?