Reuse Holiday Cards for Speech and Language Therapy

I love getting Christmas cards during the holiday season, but don’t know what to do with them once the holidays have passed.  This year, I’m going to give them a second life in my therapy sessions!

To start, select cards that have interesting pictures on the front and cut each card along the fold to separate the picture from the rest of the card.

Here are some therapy activities you can do with the cards:

• Hang up a few different pictures where all of the students can see them.  Have each student secretly choose one of the pictures and then write five words to describe it.  Read the descriptive words aloud and see if the other students can guess which picture it describes.

• Put out a few pictures and have the students each choose one to write a story about.  Remind them to use descriptive words and to include characters, a setting, and a plot.  Let the students share their stories with the group.

• Have the students find part of a picture that has their sound, cut it out, and glue it on a piece of paper.  They can then write and/or say at least one sentence that includes the word.  Older students can write a tongue-twister using the word.

• Let the students each cut out a part of a picture and glue it on a piece of paper.  Then have them draw a scene around the picture that includes other pictures with their target sounds.

• Cut a few cards apart like puzzles and write words that go together on the back of each one (e.g., words that begin with the /s/ sound on the pieces of one card, words that begin with the /r/ sound on another).  Mix up the pieces.  Once students have sorted the pieces into groups that go together, they can turn the pieces over and put the cards’ pictures together.

Please comment with any other ideas you have for reusing holiday cards.

Happy New Year!