5 Ways to Use Leaves in Speech Therapy

Leaves are such an easy play-prop you can bring into your speech therapy sessions with little prep or cost! Here are 5 ways we like to use leaves in our speech therapy rooms!

Activity #1: Leaf Hunt!  Hide leaves around the room or have the student toss a pile of leaves in the air and then go on a hunt to collect them all! Practice following directions (e.g., first find a yellow leaf, then find a red leaf); spatial concepts (e.g., the yellow leaf was UNDER the chair; the orange leaf was IN the basket; the red leaf was ON the table).

Activity #2: Hide and Seek! Hide mini objects or toys under piles of leaves and have the child search for what is hidden underneath! You can simply have piles of leaves on the table or around the room with objects hidden underneath OR a sensory tray/bin filled with leaves that you can hide objects in! Practice expanding utterances (e.g., I found a...), core words (e.g., look, found, more, hide), describing (e.g., provide 3 descriptors of the item hidden under the leaves once found), or speech sounds (e.g., hide items under the leaves that use your target sound).

Activity #3: Fall Tree Creation! Use sticky tac or painter's tape to stick leaves to the wall. Use painter's tape to make the tree trunk and the branches before having the student place the leaves on the tree. Practice following directions (e.g., put a brown leaf at the top of the tree), spatial concepts (e.g., top/bottom, on, beside, under, next to, etc.) or speech sound targets (e.g., LLLeaf on; GRRReen leaf on; BRRRown leaf on; STick it on; put it in it's SPot; etc.)

Activity #4: Playdough Trees! Create tree trunks and branches out of playdough and have the student place plastic leaves, pretend fabric/leather leaves, or real leaves in the playdough. Sequence the steps of making a playdough tree; practice verb vocabulary such as "roll the dough", "push the leaf in", "make a tree", "find a leaf", etc. 

Activity #5: Pair with Fall Themed Books! Use your plastic or fabric leaves as play-props along side your fall themed books to make them interactive and engaging for your students! For example, I love using the "Going on the Leaf Hunt" book and having the student match the same coloured leaves as mentioned in the story to help increase engagement and understanding of the content. We then hide the leaves around the room and go on our own leaf hunt, acting and retelling the story together. 

Are you looking for more lesson plan or therapy ideas? Wanting more ways to use play in your sessions??? Be sure to join us in our next course on February 21, 2023! You can sign up for our email list here to get freebies, therapy ideas and information about our next course launch!