15 Last-Minute Speech Therapy Games and Ideas for a No-Prep Christmas

No-prep speech therapy Christmas games and ideas that will put a twinkle in your eye!

Christmas is jolly. It’s also hectic and exhausting. There are schedule changes, special holiday programs, progress reports, and evaluations to wrap up… you get the picture. So how to stay merry? I say keep it simple and go no-prep. (Or at least low-prep!)

No-prep activities can include printables, but also books, games, simple crafts, digital activities, YouTube videos, and more.

Christmas books for speech therapy

Head to the library or your bookshelf for your favorite Christmas stories. There are so many great Christmas titles out there for children.

Read the book and practice articulation words as you find them. Talk about the story and characters, answer wh questions… you know what to do! Books are a goldmine of opportunities for speech and language practice.

Tip: Check your favorites out of the library early, or you may have trouble finding them

If you can’t find a specific title you need, see if you can find it on YouTube.

If you can’t find a copy, search to see if there is a good read-aloud on YouTube. You’ll want to preview the YouTube videos because some are great, and well…others aren’t.

Pick a video that shows you the pages of the book. Look for one without camera shake and one where the narrator reads well, but not too fast.

Tip: If the narration is too fast or not very expressive, you can turn off the volume and read it yourself. Doing this also gives you the opportunity to pause and discuss the vocabulary, plot, and characters and make predictions about what you think will happen next.

A few favorites you can find on YouTube:

• Llama Llama Holiday Drama by Anna Dewdney
• Froggy’s Best Christmas by Jonathon London
• Bear Stays Up For Christmas by Karma Wilson
• Mooseltoe by Margie Palatinini
• Snowmen at Christmas by Carolyn Buehner

Tips for using games in your sessions

A few fun Christmas games are sure to get your students excited to participate! Of course, you want to get in plenty of practice on goals too. How do you do that?

You keep control of the game pieces

The trick is to keep control of the game items, whether it’s dice, balls, cards or game pieces. Don’t let the students handle them until it’s time to take a turn or your session may dissolve into pandemonium! (Oh yeah, I’ve been there.)

Get multiple repetitions of practice on each turn

To maximize practice opportunities, get multiple repetitions before each turn. This could look like asking 5 questions or requiring 10 repetitions of an articulation word each time.

Practice before giving a turn to your students

In groups, I prefer to maintain focus on goals by having everyone practice their goal and then give all the students a turn to play.

Alternatively, you can drill goals for the bulk of your session, then spend the last 5 minutes playing the game as a fun reward. Bonus- if your students can play the game independently, that gives you 5 minutes to record data and write therapy notes!

Speech therapy games for Christmas

Stack-em and knock-em-down Santa cups.

Okay, I realize that adding the belt and buckle to the cups (The red ones above were painted) is a bit of prep, but it’s not required. Your kids will have just as much fun stacking red and green cups in a pattern. Use styrofoam balls to toss or bowl with. If you don’t have styrofoam balls, even wadded-up paper will work.

During your session have students answer a question, then give them a cup to stack. When they’re all stacked, you knock ’em down.

Snowball Toss

Turn the cups open-side up, get out some cotton balls, and toss. For more fun, mark the cups with point values. Students earn cotton balls for answers. Or… if you don’t mind a bit of noise, use jingle bells to toss instead!

Jingle Bell or (Pom-pom) Tic-Tac-Toe 

Grab two colors of jingle bells, draw a quick tic-tac-toe grid and you are set.

Speech Therapy Christmas Crafts

Pony Bead Candy Cane

If you want to send home a tree ornament, try this Pony Bead Candy Cane. You’ll need a pipe cleaner and red and white beads.  Each response gets a bead or two to add to their pipe cleaner. You can also work on requesting: “I need a red bead, please.”

Play Dough Christmas Tree

Now that you have the pony beads out, grab a can of green play dough and a Christmas tree cookie cutter. You’re ready to make Pony Bead Christmas Trees. Cut out a tree and give your students beads to decorate with after each response… it’s just that quick and easy!

More Christmas Craft Ideas

How about a two-item craft? Try this Ripped Paper Christmas Tree Craft from Totsfamily.com You just need construction paper and glue. Label each strip with a prompt if you like, or just practice, then add a strip.

Try Paper Strip Christmas Ornaments for your older students. Paper, scissors, a ruler, a binder clip, and a stapler and you’re ready to go. They are so pretty and you can have your students write artic words, irregular verbs, or antonyms/synonyms on the paper strips.

Make an Articulation Word Candy Cane with red and white paper. So cute and fun. You could pre-make the word strips to go on the canes, but I say no-prep, please! Just write the word as the student says it, then give the paper strip to the student to glue.

Printable and digital Christmas activities for no-prep sessions

I have lots of no-prep resources in my store for you that are ready to make planning your speech therapy Christmas-themed session a breeze.

Digital speech therapy activities

Christmas Following Directions  This is a great interactive activity for your tablet, computer, or interactive whiteboard. You can also print it as cards. Follow directions with color, size, and object to find the Christmas item named. Choose 1, 2, or 3 elements to modify the difficulty as children advance. It also includes a fun motivational trim the tree activity every few slides to keep your students engaged.

Play Christmas Bingo with riddles

Christmas Bingo Riddles is my holiday must-have! You get both print and digital game options with this Christmas favorite.

Always a hit, children love it because this bingo game comes with a fun twist: rhyming riddles to solve. We target vocabulary, listening, inference, and rhyme, plus we practice articulation as the words come up. You can print out and laminate (prep) or simply print the BW version for no-prep play.

 I love that I can gather up large groups to do make-up therapy with Bingo Riddles or I can do in-class therapy too. (There are 30 boards) And it’s just plain fun!

Grab the Christmas set, or the bundle for fun all year!

No-prep printable activities

Mixed Group Magic: No-Prep Christmas Speech Therapy Activities  Use any activity (and there are 58 different activities in this pack, for a range of ages!) with any goal, making it perfect for managing your mixed groups. These can be open-ended activities or customized for each student by adding a short list of prompts to the page. No more shuffling cards and pages.

The activities in this pack include puzzles, color by number, dot marker,  mystery squares, and more plus Christmas-themed WH and Yes/No question Quick Lists are included. (additional Quick Lists are also available) Or… just write in your own prompts.

Same and Different: Reindeer Shapes
Teach the concepts of same and different size concepts. This activity is print and go with the BW version when you make the mini-book or you can print in color and laminate it to make cards. There are 3 ways to use this resource:

• a clothespin task
• dot markers
• use a hole punch for some fun fine motor practice.

Size Concepts: Santa Shapes Clip, dot or punch while learning size concepts of small, medium, and large. Like Reindeer shapes, it comes with color cards, a BW mini-book with a parent letter, and printables too.

Christmas No-Prep Language Mandala Coloring Pages

You older students will love these color-by-number designs, and you’ll love how easy it is to cover 18 different goals with this print-and-go set. All the vocabulary and questions are Christmas-themed too.

Prefer to shop on Teachers pay teachers? Find all my Christmas activities on TpT here.

I hope you have a very merry, no-stress December and Christmas!

Don’t forget to pin this post so you can easily find these ideas again next year!