Giant Snowman On the Wall Activity

The weather is getting colder, so it’s time to bundle up and help children learn some seasonal vocabulary.  Let’s get up from the table, move around the room, and build a giant snowman!

What you’ll need:

White posterboard

White construction paper

Some way to stick the pieces together — pushpins, tape, glue, velcro, sticky tack, etc.

 Cut out pieces for the various parts:

3 snowballs – small, medium, and large

A variety of hats

Mittens

Paper branches for the arms (or go outside and collect some real branches)

Scarves

Boots

Various shaps for eyes, nose, and buttons

Orange triangles for the carrot nose

 

This activity can be adapted for a variety of goals.  Below are just a few suggestions for listeners divided into three very rough levels of difficulty.  But feel free to get creative!  This activtiy can be modified to target almost any goal your child has from school or her other therapy sessions.  Remember that the goals should drive the game, not the other way around.

BEGINNING LISTENERS

• Auditory detection: when you hear me say “go,” put a piece on the snowman

• Discrimination between words varying in syllable length (mittens vs. hat)

• Body part vocabulary (eyes, nose, mouth)

• Verbal routines (1, 2, 3 go!  Up up up down! to put the pieces on)

•  Pragmatics and turn taking skills (“my turn” “your turn”)

• Power words (push, go, uh oh, more)

• Early developing consonants (/p/ push, /m/ more, mittens, mouth /b/ boots, big)

• Teach family members’ names by giving each person a different item.  Tell the child, “Go get Daddy” though audition alone.  If the child goes to the correct person, he/she opens his/her hand to reveal the next piece of the snowman.

 

THE NEXT STEPS

• Winter clothing vocabulary (hat, scarf, mittens, snowman)  receptively and expressively

• Two-word combinations (Mama push, push hat, big nose, hat [on the] snowman)

• Following directions with 1-2+ critical elements (get the (big) nose, get the (red) hat)

• Colors

• Early prepositions: on, off

• Simple sentences (subject verb object: I push [the] hat)

• No for nonexistence (uh oh! no nose!)

• More difficult consonants (/g/ get, go, /k/ cold, cut, /t/ tape, top)

 

MAKE IT EVEN HARDER

• Identification by descriptor (get something warm and fuzzy that you wear around your neck)

• Directions with 4+ critical elements (get the red hat and the small green boots)

• Directions with a variety of concepts (before/after, if/then, when…, all/but, either/or, etc.)

• Comparative and superlative forms (the biggest snowball, the smaller mitten)

• Longer sentence structures (I put X on the snowman, I put X and you put Y)

• Past tense verbs (regular: taped, glued, pushed or irregular: put, got, stuck, made)

• /s/ blends (stuck, stick, snowman, scarf, sled, slip)

• Double adjectives (big red scarf, small spotted hat, etc.)

• Advanced prepositions (the scarf goes around the next, the button goes beside the scarf, the nose goes in between the mouth and the eyes)

• Phonological awareness (put on something that starts with the sound /m/, put on the h-a-t)