Creative Speech Therapy: How to Turn Coloring into a Powerful Intervention Tool

by Erin Larsen
Hey speech friend! 👋🏼
Is there ever an activity that a client LOVES but baffles you how you can incorporate some great speech therapy into it?
 
 Let me confess mine…
 
COLORING! 🖍️
 
When I first started providing therapy, coloring was the bane of my existence. I had at least 2 children for whom this activity was SO engaging but I wasn’t able to provide the quality of therapy I wanted to. 
 
Coloring seemed so closed-ended, I lost a lot of their focus since it was on the coloring, and it had the opportunity to go south quickly (these clients were early intervention age, so imagine any and all surfaces within reach).
 
I thought long and hard on this, because we know that highly motivating tasks can help us achieve our targets faster and I didn’t want to lose out on these opportunities. Then, voila! With a few easy changes, I was able to make coloring an activity I keep in my therapy bag on a regular basis.

Without further ado, here's my tried and true tricks to turning coloring into a powerful intervention tool!

 

  1. Keep colors in a clear, twistable container. This provides an opportunity for the child to see them and request for you to open them and for more colors (Pro Tip: Only give 1 color at a time to increase your chances of requesting!).
  2. Change up your vocabulary and manner of coloring. We can get so caught up in how adults imagine coloring that we forget it can be silly too! “Dot, dot, dot” your colors, go “wheeeee” when dashing a long line of color across a page, “whoa!” when we color fast, or “yay!” when we finish.
  3. Involve their bodies. Little people LOVE tracing their hands, feet, and body and they love seeing the finished product too! You can even cut out their tracings and play with them after.
  4. Use color sheets with targeted sounds and goals. I love using my homework color Sheets (for Articulation, Language, Fluency, Pragmatic Language, and Phonological Processes) to incorporate coloring with their goals. These pictures give targets embedded within a fun task, and you can send them home for home practice when you're done! 
language homework for speech therapy

 

I hope these tips help you as much as they've helped me with my coloring-obsessed students! Happy speeching!

👇🏼 Save this image to Pinterest so you can refer back to it later! 👇🏼

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