Spring is filled with so many fun and engaging new topics we can use in our therapy sessions! I love that this new season brings new classroom lessons and exciting ways to engage my students. Surely, it won't come as any surprise to you that I have some favorite spring cooking activities to use this time of year! Celebrate the change in season and check out my favorite spring cooking activities for the SLP! Your students will love these hands-on, spring cooking activities!
Benefits of Using Cooking in the SLP Classroom
Just in case you haven't already heard. . . cooking in therapy sessions is a TOTAL game changer. If you're looking for a new way to engage your students or speech clients, cooking is your answer! Using cooking or "no-cook" activities in your speech sessions will allow you to target key skills and learning goals in a way that your students will find engaging and exciting.
Cooking with your speech clients will make all that repetitive practice SUPER fun, and keep the interest of your littles! Plus, cooking activities will help you form trust, deeper relationships and make memories with your students! Interested in hearing more? Make sure to catch up on ALL the details on why I think cooking NEEDS to be part of your SLP lessons this spring!
Spring Flower Pretzels
Now that you know why you should incorporate cooking into your lessons, let's dive into some fun, spring-themed recipes! This year, I created a brand-new, NO COOK, Pretzel Flowers Visual Recipe resource for you to use with your students! Best of all, it's a FREEBIE! This simple activity will allow your speech clients or students to each make their very own individual-sized treat! You only need a few things for this easy activity.
- Mini twist pretzels
- Icing (any color works just fine)
- Small, Coated Candies (like M&Ms)
For this activity, students will spread icing on the pretzels and use the mini candies to create a flower shape. If you haven't used any of my visual recipe cards before, this is the perfect opportunity to check them out! Each visual recipe comes with a full-color, step-by-step instruction card. There are also vocabulary cards and comprehension questions included to extend this activity with your group.
Whenever I'm using visual recipes, I like to take this time to work on a variety of skills with my kiddos. For this activity, you can target colors, sequencing, following directions, prepositions and MORE! The possibilities are literally endless and I'm willing to bet your students won't put up a fight about any activity that ends with a delicious treat!
Digital Option
If you're doing virtual therapy or can't use real food in your activities, never fear - I have an activity for you too! This Pretzel Flower Visual Recipe resource also comes in a FREE Digital Boom Card version!
This activity will follow the same steps as the physical activity, but in digital, boom card format!
Spring "Dirt Dessert" Cups
Next up is my ALL TIME FAVORITE visual recipe, Dirt Dessert! This one is absolutely delicious and again, requires no actual cooking! This is another visual recipe featuring my full-color recipe card with step-by-step directions. This activity is great for targeting so many important skills!
You can find this one in my original, Cooking & Craft Visual Recipe Resource. And you can also grab this fun activity in my BRAND NEW, Visual Recipe Cards. Either way, this activity will be absolutely LOVED by your students this spring.
Students will mix up some chocolate pudding for "mud", crush chocolate sandwich cookies for "dirt" and add some gummy worms on top to complete the dirt dessert. This is a great activity to target sequencing with your students, work on vocabulary words for all the tools and ingredients used and test their comprehension afterward with the included questions.
Without fail, my students always love this activity! It will create a great way to bond and connect over the many learning goals you have with your students in a fun way!
Digital Spring Cooking Activities
If you want to give "cooking" a try in your classroom but are wary of the mess or can't use food in your activities, be sure to check out my Visual Recipes Boom Cards: Spring Bundle! These fun and engaging boom card activities feature 3 different fun recipes your students can "make" digitally. This bundle features my Springtime Snack Mix, Shamrock Shake, and Dirt Dessert in digital form!
Your students will work on a variety of key skills including sequencing, vocabulary, grammar, answering/asking questions, following directions, expressive language and MORE! These Visual Recipe Boom Cards are a great way to add some "cooking" to your sessions without ever having to dirty a single dish! These are also great for virtual therapy sessions too!
Watermelon Dough
Last, but certainly not least, I have a fun, non-food option for you to try with your students! This is another one of my visual recipes and it's a FREEBIE! This play dough recipe uses watermelon gelatin to give it a wonderful smell and color. It will produce a bright pink dough that smells delicious! I like to add in some black beans after this recipe is mixed up to mimic watermelon seeds as well.
Making the dough in itself is a great activity for your SLP sessions and will enable you to target many specific skills with your group. Once your dough is mixed up, feel free to extend this activity even further by allowing your littles to dive into some play!
While your students roll and mold their dough, you can use cookie cutter shapes to prompt vocabulary questions, make shape patterns, work on prepositions, and more! This activity is always a hit in my sessions and makes working on our learning goals a snap.
I hope you enjoyed all of these fun, super simple spring cooking activities! Adding cooking to your speech therapy sessions will add so many opportunities for growth and engagement with your students, I can't recommend it enough! Make sure to grab all 3 freebies from this post and have fun cooking with your littles this spring!
Save These Ideas for Later!
Don't forget to pin these ideas to your favorite classroom Pinterest board so that you can find them quickly and easily when you're ready to get cooking!
