Mother's day activities for speech, speech therapy, questions, formulating questions, language, older students, middle school, high school

Updated Jan., 2023

Struggling to come up with Mother’s Day activities for speech therapy?

There are so many cutesy things out there for younger kids to do to celebrate Mother’s day but what about our older students in speech therapy? Check out this variety of mostly free ideas to do with older students around mother’s day! I think the animal videos work nicely with students that don’t have a mother figure in their lives. Keep reading, we’ve got this!

Speech therapy: Idioms and Expressions about Mothers!

If you have older students that struggle with figurative language, have students draw pictures of and explain the meaning of these idioms about mothers!

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Here are some videos related to motherhood that you could incorporate into your speech therapy sessions! Put them through a service like viewpure to remove ads before you use them with students.

1. Cheesecake the Capybara Fosters Puppies, Animal Planet 2:55

Capybaras are large south american rodents and in this video, they prove that motherhood transcends species, when Cheescake raises a litter of puppies! You could use this one with your younger elementary students too. One year, I had students write out their definition of “mother.” After the video, we decided to change our definition to include a reference to animals and, adoption (not necessarily blood-related) and more! You could work it into an EET activity using vocabulary words like “mother” or “capybara.”

2. Threads by Torill Kove, 8:49

This short film features “threads” or “strings” that bind mothers to their children. It is a wordless short, chocked full of symbolism, about parental love. This video could also work nicely into a discussion of adoption and blended families.

Other speech therapy ideas for older students:

compare and contrast the child at the beginning and end of film,
stop the film and make predictions,
make inferences about thoughts and feelings of the characters at different points, and
have students analyze the location and movement of the thread at different points in the film.

The Cat Who Adopts Baby Ducklings, 7:58 (stop at 5:20)

I love using this video in therapy but be sure to stop it at timestamp of 5:20 to avoid a scene of a lion carrying a baby goat in his mouth. It’s also a natural spot in the video to end it. I created a print no print video companion product centered around this video that has activities for a variety of inference, language and perspective-taking skills! Click on the image below to check it out! I’ve included a data collection form individualized to the packet!

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This video companion works nicely any time of the year. I like to use it in spring when some classrooms are talking about baby animals.

How much do you older students know about Mom?

I think it’s fun to see how many things my older students students actually know about their moms (or other relative or caregiver) during my speech therapy sessions. I developed a free product that you can download in my store of 2 mother’s day activities for speech. It’s easy with this product to work on language activities like word recall, describing words, question-asking skills and more and let’s face it, kids should learn to think about their moms as humans, with their own likes and dislikes.

What do I know about Mom?

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First, have students write/type some facts they know about their mothers. If you need something more structured, use the “mom’s favorites” activity from the free product (pictured above). Our students are not used to thinking about their parents as human beings that have likes and dislikes beyond those that related to parenting. If your student can contribute some relevant facts about their mom, bravo for them. If they can’t, that’s okay too because it sets the stage for the next step in the activity!

Speech therapy Activity: Questions for MOM!

Have your students use the template in the freebie to generate a list of things they would like to know about their moms or other significant figure in their lives during speech therapy. Your students might need a quick review of question forms or a visual of them-I’ve put one in the packet!

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You can use the following list of questions as a reference in case your students need some support with questions. The questions can be light-hearted, profound or whatever you and your student decide is best!

Mother’s Day Activities for Speech Therapy: Asking Questions!

Silly or light-hearted Questions:

What’s the silliest costume you’ve ever worn?
Did you or your parents have any jokes or funny routines when you were growing up?
What were some regrettable hairstyles as a child or teenager?
Did you have any nicknames given to you from family or friends?
Who had a good sense of humor when you were growing up?
What did you watch on TV as a child?
Do you remember a funny family story?
What was your most embarrassing moment?

Reflective Questions:

Where is the favorite place that you have lived?
What is a happy memory from your childhood?
What did your 16 year old self want you to be/do as an adult?
How was your relationship with your siblings?
Tell me about the day I was born.
How would your parents have described you?
Who did you look up to when you were growing up?
Why did/didn’t you like high school?
What historical events have yyou liived through?

Informative Questions:

Describe a moment in history that you vividly remember.
Tell me about any sports or activities you did growing up.
What were your parents like?
Describe your childhood bedroom.
Did you have any pets growing up?
Who was your favorite teacher?
Were you ever in a serious accident?
What was one of your favorite foods when growing up?
Do you have any favorite family recipes?
Did you like to play outside or indoors as a child?

Your student can type in their questions for mom on this fillable pdf (perfect for distance learning).

Or, there are also black and white versions in the packet too for printing.

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Have your students report back to you after they do their “mom interview.” Students can write down the answers to the questions or report back one thing they learned about mom! I hope you found this helpful for getting mother’s day activities for speech! Looking for other spring activities? This blog post on spring idioms might help!

You can find the mother's day free activities discussed in this blog post in my TPT store here!!

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