Rock Chalk Speech Talk

Sharing Speech & Language Therapy Ideas!

  • Rock Chalk Speech Talk
  • Home
  • About
  • Blog
  • Shop
  • Free Resource Library

Halloween Speech and Language Therapy Ideas

Ah, October…. Colorful leaves, cute boots, scarves, pumpkin-flavored everything…. 🙂 Just a few of my favorite things! Halloween is just on the horizon, and if you need some fun, easy ideas to fill in some holes in your therapy plans for the next week, check out these activities I’ve been using!

1.  Alien sensory bag


I used this last Spring for an Outer Space unit, but what better time for a #TBT activity like this than in a Halloween post? 😉 I used green hair gel, but recently read about making sensory bags with colored water instead of hair gel.  I haven’t tried that yet, so if you do- let me know how it works! You can buy cheap hair gel at the Dollar Store.  Be sure to tape up the opening of the bag with some heavy duty packing tape or duct tape so it doesn’t accidentally open and spill everywhere!

Goal areas targeted: 
-sorting googly eyes by size (small/medium/large) to target size concepts
-following directions: “Put X amount of sm/med/lg eyes in the bag” (e.g. “Put 2 small eyes in the bag” “Move a big eye above a little eye” “Make a row of 3 eyeballs”)


2.  Craftivities
I love using my Cariboo vocabulary and phonology cards as the base for crafts– you can read my post on using them here.  Printing them on colored computer or construction paper makes these crafts super easy! (Note: the Alien craft features pictures from Primary Punch’s No Prep Apraxia set, while Frankenstein and the pumpkin feature my Cariboo cards)

Goal areas targeted: articulation/phonology, vocabulary, WH questions, object functions

3.  Playdough Monsters for Speech AND Language!

 

I first tried this out last year in my small group lessons in the ECSE classrooms, and the kids LOVED it! I cut some straws and gathered playdough, fruit loops, googly eyes, beads and some super skinny dowel rods that I happened to have on hand.  BUT, this year, I used pipe cleaners instead of dowel rods when I did this in therapy and it was WAY better.  I also only used beads instead of fruit loops, which still let me incorporate colors, but was easier than the fruit loops which sometimes crumbled.

Goal areas targeted:
-basic concepts/following directions (“Put two straws under the eyes” “Put 3 purple fruit loops on the tall stick” etc…)
-colors
-counting
-fine motor skills (Maybe if you ask your OT or ECSE teachers nicely, they’ll even have kids cut straws as a fine motor activity ahead of time to give you ;-))
-articulation (as a speech activity, each production gave them a piece to make a monster of their own.  5 productions = 5 fruit loops, 5 beads, etc…!)

4.  Print and GO Craftivities –Haunted House + Pumpkin Patch
I have two print and go Halloween craftivities in my TpT store that are perfect for when you’re short on time (aka ALL. THE. TIME. #SLPLIFE) and can’t laminate/prep in advance.

“Spooky Speech” features early sounds /p, b, m, n, w, h, t, d, y, k, g, f/ and s-blends
There IS an option to laminate and assemble to make a large haunted house and get your kids up and away from the table, but if you’re short on time, just use the craftivity option!

Print out the single page haunted house, glue onto black construction paper, and glue on the ghosts as you practice.  If you’re using it in a group (which, let’s be real- if you’re working in the schools, you’re definitely using it in a group) and need to keep little hands busy, let them color the target word pictures as they wait their turn!
Goal areas targeted: 
-Articulation
-Pronouns (using the sentence, “He swallowed a…”)
-Spatial concepts (“Glue the apple at the bottom of the house” “Put the paint at the top of the house”)

“Pumpkin Patch Articulation” is a no-prep articulation activity that covers earlier AND later-developing sounds.  Pumpkins are a great alternative to ghosts/witches etc… if you’re not allowed to use “Halloween” in therapy.  There is a lot to color on the background scene page, which, again, is great to keep your kiddos busy when it’s not their turn in a group.


Goal areas targeted:
-Articulation
-Spatial concepts (giving specific directives about where to place pumpkins– “Glue the slide next to slash” “Glue the scale under the slide” etc…)

5.  Halloween Wind-Up Toys


Grab these at Michaels for $2 a piece!

If you have kids working on combining two icons together with PECS, you can use wind-up toys to target this goal by having icons of the wind-up toys (either an actual photo or clipart of “pumpkin” “skull” or “ghost,” as an example using the toys above).

Combine the wind up toy icons with the icon for “go” (e.g. “go pumpkin” or, with the ‘I want’ sentence strip, “I want …’pumpkin go.’ ”  You can also bring in some color concepts, and use icons “orange” + “pumpkin” or “white” + “ghost” to model expanded language, as well!

Hallie at Speech Time Fun wrote a post about using Wind Up toys with sheets she made based on language goals, while I’ve seen posts from Speech Room News and Crazy Speech World about using them with articulation sheets!

6.  Halloween Erasers


I found these in the Target $1 spot about a month ago! These are perfect to use with a Halloween bingo game, or instead of Chipper Chat tokens on a token board. Danielle over at Sublime Speech also had a great idea to use the candy erasers for the Granny’s Candy game!

7.  “The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything” book

Goal areas targeted:
-Body parts/clothing items
-Action words
-Following directions

One of my super smart ECSE teachers gave me the inspiration for this activity! I used this book for one of my kids working on following 2 step related directions.  I cut out the printable props from Toddler Approved but didn’t have time to color them, so I left them as is.  Confession: My therapy materials aren’t always pretty 😉 I also used a die where you can insert your own pictures, and cut out the printables from 3Dinosaurs to put in it.

The kiddo I was working with rolled the die, and then I’d give him a directive to act out from the story.  For example, if he rolled the pants, I’d tell him “Get the pants and make them wiggle” or “Find the gloves and make them clap” if he rolled the gloves, etc…

8.  “Spookley” book

This book is great for talking about attributes (colors + shapes of the pumpkins) with your little ones! Round pumpkins, square pumpkins, rectangular and triangular pumpkins, blue pumpkins, purple pumpkins, etc…! It’s also FULL of s-blends, which is great practice for your artic kids working on those blends.  We also made our OWN Spookley with pictures of target words from my Cariboo phonology set printed on orange paper.  You could print on blue, purple, or pink paper, too, to make the other types of pumpkins that grew at the end of the book!
Goal areas targeted:
-Attributes (colors + shapes)
-Expanding utterances with attributes
-Articulation

Which one of these activities is your favorite? What are some of your most favorite go-to activities around this time of year? Share them with me in the comment section below!

«
»

Filed Under: Uncategorized 1 Comment

Comments

  1. Edward Cross says

    November 8, 2017 at 11:08 am

    Massive post. Really good-looking blog. A lot of blogs, I observe these days don't really present anything that I'm interested in .but I'm most definitely interest in this one. I am in reality happy with article quality and direction. This post is mark on in helpful how some thought apply to any script point. Thanks a lot for protection enormous things.
    Visit : Custom essay writing reviews

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Subscribe Via Email

Categories

Search

Latest on Instagram

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

Copyright © 2023 · Website Design By Jumping Jax Designs