I was going through one of my son’s coloring books I purchased as at dollar store and for the first time, I looked at it with speech therapist’s eyes.  I suddenly realized the number of amazing activities I could use for therapy hidden in this dollar gem.  Check it out!

Other than the typical coloring pages, I found this fun little art activity.  Learning how to draw different people and animals.  How easily this could translate to a reinforcement activity; after the required number of trials/stimulus cards, each child draws in one square, until of course the whole picture is complete.  Pretty cool to incorporate artistic abilities with language.  Working both sides of the brain here!  Fun!

Next up,these two awesome activities.  The first of which is a great phonological awareness/early literacy/reading and spelling activity that asks children to create as many words as they can think of using a given word or phrase.  Simply by writing each letter of the phrase on small pieces of construction paper, a child can move the letters around and create a number of different sound combinations/letter sequences they can “read” to determine if it is in fact a real word.  If so write it on the line!  Cool!

The second page above is a maze.  We’ve all seen them.  How great would it be to facilitate executive function skills by having the child talk out his/her strategy, formulate a plan, test their plan and fix as needed?  I think that could be a pretty fun activity!

Word Search! We find them in all of these activity coloring books and what a great reading activity!  Or maybe a fun reinforcement activity for various speech goals, taking turns finding and circling words after so many stimulus cards/trials?  How about a partner/group activity, where students need to work together to find the words, and whichever team finds all of the words first wins?  Great for social skills, when working with children who seem to lace the ability to cooperatively work with peers.

How about a fun code activity? Years ago I worked with an elementary age student with ASD who loved deciphering codes.  This would have been the perfect reinforcement activity for him.  Also great for working on executive function skills, problem solving , trial and error, using self-talk, etc.

Same vs. different pages!  I can see myself photocopying a page like this and creating a number of different “same vs. different” tasks by coloring or changing the pictured objects in some way (drawing something on them, whiting out other parts, etc.).  Oh the possibilities!!!!

Another phonological awareness activity; coming up with as many words that rhyme with a given word.  Awesome for working on rhyming (of course), word families, spelling (encoding), etc.

This activity asks a child to draw himself doing his dream job.  This could be a great way to work with non-readers/writers on expressive language skills.  With a simple modification, you could work on written language by asking students who can write to describe their dream job.  A nice little writing prompt already made for you!  The students could work on the writing process (brainstorming, organizing, rough draft, editing, etc.) on scrap paper and write their published copy on this sheet, then color to complete!

The final activity I found in this coloring book was a page that asks children to draw a number of items in one category! I think you can see where I’m going here…working on semantic mapping, category items, synonyms, antonyms, attributes, etc. can all be targeting in this simple activity!

Look at all the treasures I found in this one simple $1 coloring book!!!!  I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner.  I can’t wait to use these ideas with my own clients.

Enjoy and happy talking!!!