Playdough Articulation Activity | Manicure Smash Mat Game | Prek-8

Want the secret to making articulation drill fun? Add Playdough! Playdough articulation activities add instant engagement during your speech therapy sessions! This articulation drill game combines playdough, a variety of speech sounds, and manicures (yes, manicures!) to make a memorable speech therapy session for your students who need articulation practice. 

There’s no doubt that this engaging, hands on playdough articulation speech therapy activity will become your most frequently requested articulation drill game. 

Imagine this: 

You’ve got a nail polish obsessed speech therapy student with articulation goals. 

Little does she know, you have a secret weapon that’s going to make her nail polish loving heart explode as you practice articulation sounds. 

Intrigued? Let me explain.

This nail polish manicure articulation drill activity transforms your speech therapy session into a nail salon. 

Here’s How this Articulation Drill  Works:

➀ Your student picks a “nail polish” (playdough) color to set the salon experience.

➁ You pull out the articulation sound you need to work on in speech therapy that day.

➂ Your student says “chair” to practices /ch/ in the initial position

➃ Your student continues to say each target articulation word and each time she gets to smash a small piece of playdough onto a fingernail to simulate the salon experience of “polishing her nails.” 

➄ After saying 8 target articulation words, your student will have slowly added play dough to the fingernails on each card

The end result will be a beautiful speech therapy articulation manicure!

There are 8 target words per articulation drill activity smash mat. For multiple repetitions, just have your speech therapy student say her articulation word 2-3x per turn.

And the best part? 

Who this Articulation Activity is For: 

This playdough articulation activity can be used with preschool through middle school speech therapy students.

For younger students with articulation goals: picture-supported manicure articulation smash mats are provided for your younger speech therapy students.

For older students with articulation goals: There are text-only, higher level sound targets included.

How To Set It Up

Setting up your manicure playdough articulation activity is easy!

Just print, cut and laminate and you’ll have an articulation activity that you can use over and over again with your speech therapy students.

You can use this articulation activity in individual speech therapy sessions, or in mixed group speech therapy articulation sessions.

What Articulation Sounds Are Included?

You will receive both activity levels in this PDF download. 

The “younger version'' contains pictures. 

The “older version” contains text-only.

⭐  Articulation Speech Sounds for PreK through Grade 3 (includes pictures):

•  ​​/p/ initial and final
• /b/ initial and final
• /t/ initial and final
• /d/ initial and final
• /k/ initial and final
• /g/ initial and final
• /sm/ initial
• /sn/ initial
• /sw/ initial
• /sp/ initial
• /sk/ initial
• /sl/ initial
• /st/ initial
• /str/ initial
• /skr/ initial
• /skw/ initial
• /s/ initial and final
• /f/ initial and final
• /sh/ initial and final
• /ch/ initial and final
• /r/ initial
• /r/ blends initial (mixed)
• /l/ initial
• /l/ blends initial (mixed)

⭐ Articulation Speech Sounds for Upper Elementary and Middle School (text-only):

• Voiceless th: initial, medial, & final
• Voiced th: initial, medial, and final
• sh articulation speech sounds - initial, medial, & final
• ch articulation - initial, medial, & final
• j speech sound - initial medial, and final
• s articulation - initial, medial, and final
• s blends - initial, medial, final & mixed
• z articulation -  initial, medial, & final
• r initial 
• r blends - initial
• l articulation - initial, medial, final
• l blends articulation
• open-ended option
• vocalic r articulation 
  •  vocalic air
  • vocalic ar
  • vocalic ear
  • vocalic ire
  • vocalic er
  • vocalic rl

Additionally, an open-ended articulation option is included.

Don’t just transform your nails- transform your articulation speech therapy session!

Download the manicure playdough articulation activity today, and see how much fun your speech therapy students can have during articulation drill!

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You may also like these other language and articulation activities…

→ Lisp and Vocalic R Bundle (articulation activities for vocalic r and correcting a lisp) 

→ Entire Year of Grammar Activities for SLPs

→ Speech Therapy - Following Directions Challenge

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Permission to copy for single classroom use only.

Please purchase additional licenses if you intend to share this product.

Articulation activities for speech therapy