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Movin’ Mondays: Spooky Speech Fun!

I absolutely LOVE Halloween.  It’s my second favorite time of year, second only to Christmas.  I have an entire BOX full of Halloween materials for speech that I look forward to using every year!

Here are some of my favorite up-and-moving activities for Halloween week!

1.  Toilet Paper Ghost bowling

I saw this on Pinterest (link here) during my first year in the schools, and have had a blast with it every year! I typically do this with an artic group of 2– one kid practices their words, then bowls, and while they are setting the ghost pins back up, the other kid is practicing their words.  The second kid bowls, and while they are bowling/setting back up, that first student is practicing speech words again.  That way, each kid is busy with something and there’s not much down time where a student is just waiting for their turn.

I also just saw a variation of this activity today from a new blog, Cheerful Speech Chatter, using bowling pins.. super cute!  http://cheerfulspeechchatter.blogspot.com/2013/10/ghost-bowling.html

2.  Pumpkin beanbag toss

This is pretty simple, but my kids love beanbags! I had them toss beanbags onto a pumpkin, and they had to tell me the number on the pumpkin they landed on (working on number recognition).  The number on the pumpkin was either the number of times they said their speech words (with artic cards) or the number of cards they had to do before their next turn (with the language kids; ie 4 pronoun cards, 2 vocab cards, etc.. Or, you could do it this way with artic, too, and have them do 3 cards 5x each or 4 cards 5x each, etc… for even more repetitions!).  You could modify this for kids working on MLU and put pictures underneath the beanbag and have them use 3 word phrases like (“I got ___”   “I found ___” or “___ under pumpkin” etc…)

One of the preK teachers I worked with last year had some super cool beanbags that one of our previous preschool parents had sewn her, and one of the beanbags was made from a skull & crossbones pattern– perfect for Halloween and my little boys LOVED using it for this activity.  They asked for it almost all every. single. time.  Unfortunately, I don’t work with that teacher anymore so I no longer have access to the skull & crossbones beanbag — I think I need to learn how to sew just so I can make a set for myself! Surely it can’t be too difficult, right?!

3.  Ghost Footprints

I got the inspiration for this from the blog, “Toddler Approved.”  I modified it a bit to fit my needs, and used these Fall Concepts Bingo pieces to tape on to the ghost footprints.  The kids have to listen for a specific picture to find (i.e. find the pumpkin UNDER the table, ON TOP of the table, etc…) and then hop onto that footprint to “catch” the ghost before he floats away.  The kids were giggling the whole time… Oh to be a preschooler again… 🙂

4.  Trick or Treating with speech cards

I’m pretty sure I saw this idea somewhere out there in blog-land/Pinterest a couple years ago, but I have no idea where I saw it first.  I have a couple little trick or treat bags like this one below from the Target $1 Spot

I taped pictures of candy pieces to the back of speech cards, and then hid the cards around the room.  The kids got to “trick or treat” around the room and collect as many pieces of “candy” as they could to fill their trick or treat bags! We practiced each word before putting them in the bag.  Again, you could modify this in any way to fit your kids’ goals! You could work on increasing sentence length by using phrases like “__ in ghost” (or whatever your bag is) “Ghost eats ___,” or “Put in ___.”  
Check back tomorrow for a post on a few Halloween-themed crafts I like to do in therapy, too! What are some of your favorite Halloween activities to do in speech?

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3rd time’s a charm trying to post this 😆😅 3rd time’s a charm trying to post this 😆😅 Loving 10 Lucky Leprechauns for a St Patrick’s Day book for the littles— my own 2 year old has loved it and so did a lot of my preschoolers last week! 

Super similar in style to “10 Fat Turkeys” — each page adds a leprechaun doing a different action (great for -ing verb practice!) and has a fun repetitive line (“Fiddle de fizz, tis magic it is”) 

Use this book for /l/ and /f/ sound practice too, with your speech sound kids! 

For an easy no prep activity, have a character swing from a vine (pipe cleaner, ruler, string, etc) to a target card like one of the leprechauns in the book! We worked in s-blends too with “swing” and telling the leprechaun to “stop” 💚🍀
❄️ It’s the most wonderful time… of the ye ❄️ It’s the most wonderful time… of the year! ❄️ 
“Turkey Claus” is the best way to transition from Thanksgiving to a Christmas theme and no one will ever prove to me otherwise 😂 🦃 🎅 

And not to get ahead of ourselves, but… Did you know there’s a Valentine’s version coming out in a couple weeks, too?!
Turn your @learningresources sorting houses into s Turn your @learningresources sorting houses into spooky houses for trick or treating!

1️⃣ Decorate them with Halloween stickers (turn it into a speech sound trial reinforcer or following directions activity!)

2️⃣ Put candy mini erasers in the houses (or, make it a silly game and do categories! Put different categories of mini erasers or mini objects in the houses and have them give the trick or treater something from a named category)

3️⃣ Put a person in the house 

4️⃣ Pull up Knock Knock Trick or Treat from @supersimpleofficial on YT

5️⃣ Use Super Simple’s free character printables and use them to go trick or treating at each door! Practice things like predicting who comes next based on the shadow, WH questions, “he/she/they are….” and imitate actions from the characters on the video (steer the ship like a pirate, dance like a ballerina, etc!) 

So easy and minimal prep! Tag an SLP friend below who could use this idea! ⬇️
Who else loves Room on the Broom?! I love it for t Who else loves Room on the Broom?! I love it for the core vocabulary modeling opportunities, rhyming text, repetitive lines, and the great vocabulary used throughout the story! 

ROTB unit with all kinds of story printables is now available on TPT… grab it for your next 2 weeks of Halloween therapy! 🧙‍♀️🎃
🍎🍎 Therapy materials don’t have to have to 🍎🍎 Therapy materials don’t have to have to be fancy!

Grab a cup, stick some apples on, and you have yourself an apple tree for “10 Red Apples” (or any other apple book!)

Some of my kids just aren’t into paper materials so I needed something that would add a “3D”/tangible aspect to the tree besides just sticking paper apples on a paper tree.  This did the trick!

What other books would you use this apple tree with? 
🍎 🍏 🍎
Dressing up book characters is always a fave in pr Dressing up book characters is always a fave in prek! 

“Pirate Jack Gets Dressed” is short and sweet with rhyming text and a focus on clothing and body part vocabulary and colors! All great for the beginning of the year themes like colors, pirates (Talk Like a Pirate Day is on Monday!), and All About Me!

I sent these free story pieces to my email list last week but if you missed them, grab them with the link in my profile! ➡️ @rockchalkspeechtalk
Is this book in your ocean themed collection yet? Is this book in your ocean themed collection yet? I *finally* checked it out this summer and I’ve been using it with almost everyone!

This book works great for…

⭐️sp and sw blends (repeated lines “I spy” and “Swim away”)

⭐️long a sound (“way” is repeated on every page) and I used “hey!” instead of “hello!” on each page

⭐️ Bilabials: I seem to always have 1-2 kids these last few years working on bilabials! “Me” is on every page, and you can use “bye” instead of “see ya later” on each page, too. The last page has tons of bilabials! (up up up, deep, mama (x3), me)

⭐️initial /d/ if you have a backer (down and deep are repeated on each page)

⭐️CV words “hi” and “me” (and “bye” if you use that instead of see ya later

⭐️Core words: down, in, I, see, look, me, go (when I pair with a sensory bin, I also use “like” “get” and “out”

⭐️Repetitive Lines: Makes it more engaging when the kids can chime in and “read” it with you!

⭐️Verbs: I love a book that has actions to act out on each page! Movement always helps keep my kids’ attention in sessions and especially at circle time in a bigger group!

⭐️Describing the ocean animals

⭐️Comparing and Contrasting ocean animals

Literacy based therapy is the easiest way to structure therapy sessions- centering it around a book always sparks ideas for play activities to use with and after the book to work on goals, too!
A Camping Spree with Mr Magee is always one of my A Camping Spree with Mr Magee is always one of my go-to books for a camping theme! 

⭐️ Full of s-blends and initial /k/ opportunities, it’s a great choice for when you have to have mixed speech and language groups (and who doesn’t have kids working on those sounds?!)

⭐️ Lots of opportunities for pronoun + be verb + -ing verb structure sentences, and regular past tense verbs, too!

⭐️ Lots of AAC core word modeling opportunities

⭐️ Multiple opportunities for “why” questions which aren’t always easy to come by!

⭐️ Rhyming text that has a great flow to it— especially love this during whole group!

⭐️ annnnd they make s’mores in the book, which is *obviously* a necessity in any camping theme 😂

Take a look at the mini unit with printables you can use for circle time and small group therapy- I just updated it so redownload from TPT if you already own it! I added ingredient icons and sequencing/retell pictures for the science experiment, 3 sets of Cariboo cards, and basic concept play dough mats for this unit to help you have even more of your goals covered with super easy planning!

We “packed the camper” at circle time this week and it was a hit! Easily adaptable for different language skills, too— Target receptive id or identifying based on descriptors like function, appearance, location, etc! 

Find it on TPT with the link in profile ➡️ @rockchalkspeechtalk

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