Free Speech and language Activities
We hope you enjoy this year’s selection of Christmas Freebies – speech and language activities designed to get your children chatting. A flexible feast of treats to download and print as and when it suits you.
They are all standalone activities but like the Chatty Bat Festive Pairs link to our Early Soundplay series of books. You can easily build on these activities if the children are familiar with the characters and their stories.
Tess and Bess get dressed for a day of fun in the snow – what do they wear?
Twelve mini pictures from Tess and Bess in the Snow can be used for a variety of simple language activities, including sequencing, lotto and pairs games.
These activities give the children lots of oportunities to hear and practise saying ‘s’ blend words.
Colouring activities are great for developing listening, understanding and talking. They also help to reinforce vocabulary, for example items of clothing and colours, with opportunities to hear and practise using the words.
Share the Tess and Bess Colouring Activity sheet or print two copies and have one each. Talk about and then colour the picture taking it in turns to tell each other what to do.
Christmas themed objects hidden in a picture such as Find Clarabelle’s Baubles (or real ones for a treasure hunt) provide opportunities for modelling and reinforcing ‘Wh?’ words – Where are the puffins? Who is wearing Clarabelle’s scarf?
Talking about the composite picture based on the Clarabelle’s Scarf Early Soundplay story gives lots of opportunities for children to hear and practise saying words with the sound target ‘f’.
Cooking is fun and great for language development! Keelo’s Christmas Cookies is a lovely activity for encouraging talking – relaxed chatter about what you’re doing, seeing, smelling and tasting.
Baking creates opportunities to ask and answer questions, follow instructions and learn a sequence of events. Children can learn new vocabulary in context and use these words in a hands on situation. There are lots of /k/ words to hear and practise too!
We’ve included some Christmas themed rhymes such as Five Christmas Puddings (with a Christmas pudding lolly stick puppet to bring the rhyme to life). Again that link directly to at least one of the activities.
We hope you enjoy these activities check out Christmas Freebies for more!
