Snowmen picture cards are a very useful tool for practicing descriptive sentences in receptive and expressive language. They are one of my “go to” activities for speech therapy in the month of January. I use them in the traditional “Matching” and “Go Fish” games. The students all seem willing to participate because it doesn’t seem like work. They get multiple repetitions on skills they are working on and it doesn’t seem like drilling. These games are played by a variety of age and ability ranges so work well with mixed groups of students. Continue reading for a free download of cards further down.
When using these cards with my students, I provide carrier phrases for those students who are practicing certain complex sentence types. For example question forms: “Does your snowman have ….. ?” and relative clauses, ” Do you have a snowman who has ______ and a ________?” or prepositional phrase, “Do you have a snowman with___ and ______?” I require them to use the pattern until they no longer need a prompt and can do it on their own.
For those students who are working on articulation in conversational speech, there are plenty of opportunities to use the th, r, s, l in words and blends.
As you can see, this activity can be used for quite a mix of students. It is also great for getting data for progress reports at this time of year.
As a reward for making it to this point of my post, I made a free set of cards for your convenience. There are 5 sheets of 4 cards to make a total of 20 different cards. You can make as many sets as you need. I usually make 4 copies of each page for a game of Go Fish. I have mine printed on cardstock and laminated. They have lasted several years.
Just click on the free download button and you will get a printable pdf file. The snowmen in the pictures have similarities and differences, so students really need to listen carefully or make sure they are being descriptive enough when making questions for their listeners. Saying the snowman has a black hat or stick arms will not give enough information. There are several that fit that description. This may require a student to ask for more information which is also a good skill for students to develop.
The snowmen are from http://clipart-library.com/ and are for personal use only. Commercial use is not permitted. Please use these cards with students on your caseload or class and not for resale. If you would like to add more variety there are more snowmen for download on that site. Students can also use the blank cards to make their own versions of snowmen.
