Zoo Themed Lesson Plan for Speech Therapy

Using a zoo theme in speech therapy is a great theme as it can be used all year long! We are here to help you plan a zoo themed lesson plan you can use in speech therapy with little to no prep!

Activity #1: Choose any "zoo" themed book you can start your session off with. Pair the story with zoo play-props that you can pair with your zoo play-scene. Talk about the different animals you might find going to the zoo and what animals you saw in the story.

Activity #2: Zoo Play-Scene! This particular scene was purchased at Walmart and is simple but provides many opportunities to target themed vocabulary, following directions, spatial concepts, pronouns and more! Use farm animal toy pieces, paper pieces, felt pieces or stickers to create your own zoo play scene! Practice the spatial concepts "on", "in", "under", "beside", "behind" as you place animals around the zoo.

Activity #3: Zoo themed puzzle and ball popper toys! One way we love using puzzles in our sessions is through standing up the wooden puzzle pieces and having the students knock them down with the ball popper. You can have the child practice speech sounds when doing this activity (e.g., /s-blends/: squeeze, stick, stand; /k,g/: knock, pick, go, get, got; etc.) , expanding utterances (e.g., I hit the polar bear!), or describing (e.g., describe the animal you knock down with 3 descriptors before putting it in the puzzle). 

Activity #4: Animal Movement Activities! Whether you have an animal die (like seen in this picture), animal themed surprise eggs or even hide animals or animal foot prints around the room you can make a fun therapy activity where you get your kids up and moving. Roll the die and act out the animal (this is great for practicing verbs and associations: e.g., hippos like to swim, swim like a hippo; run like a cheetah, etc.). You can also hide themed animals in your animal eggs and have the child find an egg and describe the animal inside it, practice multisyllabic words, or spatial concepts when finding each egg. 

Activity #5: Banana Blast by Goliath Games! Great to target speech sounds (e.g., /k,g/: monkey, keep, caught, pick, give, got; /s-blends/: stick, steal, sneaky, etc.), multisyllabic words (e.g., banana, monkey), plurals (banana vs. bananas), and way more!

If you end up using any of these themed activities in your sessions be sure to tag us on instagram @playbasedspeechtherapycourse. We love hearing what's helpful and working for you in your sessions!

Lastly, are you looking for more lesson plan ideas and ways to use play in your sessions??? Be sure to subscribe to our email list for future therapy ideas and lesson plans : https://www.playbasedspeechtherapycourse.com/ or our FREE webinar: https://www.playbasedspeechtherapycourse.com/free-play-based-speech-therapy-webinar