Let’s talk about making your speech therapy life easier with these 5 easy board games you can use for articulation therapy.
1. Connect Four
Connect Four is pretty straightforward and a favorite in my therapy room. Simply take turns dropping tokens into a vertical board and the first to a line of four wins. Pretty easy and timeless. On top of that, it’s a really great game to elicit multiple sound repetitions either at the word, phrase, or sentence level and even in connected speech! It’s perfect to pair with articulation targets. You will likely need to bring a word list while playing the physical version. There are also tons of printable and digital four-in-a-row games like Connect Four available through TPT as well.
My students love using Connect Four during our articulation therapy sessions, so I made a four-in-a-row activity! It has the articulation targets included in the activity itself and comes in both print and digital versions – perfect for teletherapy. Not only does it incorporate the targets within the game but it also has pictures with each word to support emerging readers. The activity keeps them engaged throughout the session AND they also practice two target sounds each turn so we get so many repetitions by the end of the session. If you think your students would also enjoy this game, check out the freebie at The Speech Boat store!
2. Snakes and Ladders
Snakes and Ladders is another popular one my kids love. The gameplay is also super simple. Each turn, roll some dice and make your way up a path filled with venomous snakes and dangerously unmanned ladders. Maybe don’t explain it to your students like that but essentially: roll, move your token through the board, go up the ladders, and slide down the snakes.
To incorporate speech practice, on the student’s turn, have them produce their speech targets. I like to have the student repeat the word three times to increase repetitions or have them say the word the number of times they moved spaces on the board. For example, if they rolled a five, they say the word five times. On your turn, you can say a speech target as well which is a perfect opportunity to provide modelling. This game requires few moving pieces and keeps prep time to a minimum.
3. Jenga
I love Jenga because it’s great to use with students of all ages! The rules are simple: players take turns removing blocks from the tower, doing their best to keep it from tumbling down.
I like to incorporate this game into my session by pairing a target to each block removed from the tower. You can pair this game with a word list. If you can get a good companion resource that has a list of words and pictures for your students, you can really make this an engaging articulation session. Of course, you can find a few of these companion lists online and even on TPT.
Since my students keep asking to play Jenga over and over, I figure I’d make a companion activity! I added words and pictures targeting various sounds and word positions. It’s one of my go-to activities to use with my articulation groups. If you have articulation groups in your caseload, this is a perfect grab-and-go activity to add to your therapy toolbox! You can take a look at my Jenga companion here!
4. Tic-Tac-Toe
Oh Tic-tac-toe. I’ve played it so many times over the years! It’s a great game to play with younger students. As with some of the other games on this list, you can encourage utterances on the student’s turn before they make their move. It can be played quickly and with a pen and paper as long as you have a word list. Alternatively, there are a ton of resources online and on TPT that have target words included in the game itself so you can find those pretty easily! The only downside to Tic-Tac-Toe is that the novelty wears off quickly and the games are pretty short, so you may struggle to hold your kid’s attention. Engagement is key and so you likely will need to prepare other activities to keep your students motivated.
5. Battleship
Last but not least, battleship! I remember playing this game as kid with my older siblings for hours and hours. In battleship, you take turns guessing the location of your adversary’s ships by guessing coordinates on your gameboard. A downside for this one would be the multiple small pieces for the boats and markers for “hit” and “miss” which are easy to lose and hard to sanitize. Otherwise, this is a classic game that is often a hit (pun intended) with my older students.
I love adding pictures to activities to support my emerging readers so I made a Battleship-inspired articulation activity (as shown here!). Now, this is the perfect way to include two target sounds for extra practice each turn! In order to make a guess, the student needs to say two words with their target sound, doubling repetitions during gameplay. If you have older students working on articulation goals, you can check out Speech Battle on my TPT store here!
There you have it! I hope you find that these 5 board games make your articulation therapy sessions easier and more engaging! These are some of my favorites. Let me know your favorites at my email hosnia.thespeechboat.com!
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Hosnia
