Even in climates that don’t get enough snow for a real snowball fight, children of all ages will love to get some energy out with this activity… and work on some speech, language, and listening goals, too!
What you will need:
Lots of tissue paper or old computer paper (newspaper works, too, but it doesn’t quite look as white like a snowball as the others do)
Each player or team starts out with a big pile of paper. Wad them up to make “snowballs” and throw!
BEGINNING LISTENERS
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Listen for the whistle, bell, or person saying, “Go!” to begin
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Listen to the sound of crinkling paper
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Pragmatic intentions: can the child use vocalization + gesture or a first power word for a variety of intentions (calling attention, requesting objects, requesting actions, etc.)
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Basic concepts: big and little, up and down
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Verbal routine (1… 2… 3… throw!)
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Work on family members’ names by throwing to various people
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“More” to request snowballs and “all gone” when you’ve thrown them all
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Use each snowball for speech babble sets for target phonemes and then throw!
THE NEXT STEPS
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Verbs smash, throw, roll, hit, catch
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Two word combinations (attribute + entity: big snowball, possessor + possession: Mommy[‘s] snowball, entity + location: snowball up, action + object: throw snowball, agent + action: Daddy throw)
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Subject-Verb-Object sentences (Mommy throw [the] snowball, I throw [the] snowball)
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Adverb-time “again” (“Throw it again!”) and “already” (“I already threw it!”)
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Prepositions: throw the snowballs over, under, around
MAKE IT EVEN HARDER
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Synonyms like toss, grab, wad, pound, pelt, crumple, hurl
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Throw the snowballs at your target words taped to the wall to practice a specific speech sound
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Verb tenses (I will throw a snowball, I threw a snowball, I crumpled the paper, I have made a snowball before)
Elizabeth A. Rosenzweig 