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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!

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We’ve been playing with allll the bug and garden We’ve been playing with allll the bug and garden activities this month up until this week when I shifted more to ice cream.. but I’m happy to share that my companion for “Up in the Garden, Down in the Dirt” is finally up on TpT!!

I love this book because it lends itself so well to SO many play extension activities with bugs, birds, flowers, and vegetable gardens.  We are lucky enough to have an outdoor garden where I work, so the classrooms have all been helping to take care of the plants— the best real life extension activity I could ask for!

The book is also chock-full of s-blends— and isn’t anything loaded with s-blends an SLP staple? 😂 I even made lists for you of all the s blend words (and other frequently occurring sound targets within the book) so you know what words you can target if you’re seeing kids in mixed groups. 

Swipe through to see all the fun hands-on activities you’ll get to work on themed vocabulary with your students— through labeling objects, verbs, object functions, and basic concepts.  Easily target multiple goals at once with activities that target different goal areas simultaneously.

Feeling like your brain is mush by this point in the year and just want someone to give you some other play activity ideas for your theme without having to search allll the places? Gotcha covered ✅  You’ll also get a list of some extra play activities with goal ideas to target within them!

Music creates some of the best connections— and it’s one of the best ways to start out your circle times/push in lessons… but you probably don’t have time to search and find the good garden and bug related songs on YouTube, right? 

Well, good news— You’re covered on that front, too, with a separate pdf just for links to different songs WITH Target goal ideas for each song, too! Download to your iPad and go!

I’ll leave this companion on sale for the next 24 hours (through Friday night) so you can still grab it at a discount for next year even if you’re done with this theme (your future self will thank you 😉)

Link in profile! ➡️ @rockchalkspeechtalk
If you’re looking to add some diversity to your If you’re looking to add some diversity to your bookshelf with May’s garden + bug themes, check out these 4 garden books featuring black or Hispanic characters!

1- “Plants Feed Me” - Short and simple text to explain where fruits and veggies come from and the different parts of the plants we eat.

Kids work together to take care of the garden (pick, water, dig, plant, etc.. great for verbs!) No main character, but features kids who are Black, white and Hispanic.

2- Lola Plants a Garden:  Lola wants to plant a flower garden. Her mom helps her through the planning steps. Lola reads books about gardens, chooses her favorite flowers, makes a list, buys seeds, then plants them. She waits and waits, then finally her plants grow! 

This book lends itself to activities that target sequencing, gardening verbs, and object functions. Lola makes a flower book while she waits for her real ones, so art supplies AND gardening tools are depicted in this book— perfect for object function targets!

3- Miguel’s Community Farm: Great book for comparing/contrasting!Miguel is looking for sunflowers, so the book starts off describing all the features of a sunflower.

On each page, Miguel sees a plant that shares a feature of a sunflower and wonders if he’s found them. However, the book then describes one way the plants are different, too (Sunflowers have yellow petals.  Artichokes have petals, too (similarity), but they’re green, not yellow (difference).

Miguel has 2 dads, who aren’t a prominent part of the book but are part of the 1st and last page illustrations.  The last page also depicts a garden party with Miguel’s friends, who are of varying ethnic backgrounds and physical abilities. 

4- Amara’s Farm: Same author/illustrator as Miguel’s Community Garden (featuring the same friends at the end!), and another compare/contrast book in the same format. 

Amara is searching for pumpkins on the farm, but this could fit into a Spring garden theme since it compares/contrasts produce. There’s also a lot of bugs in the illustrations, making it easy to fit into a bug and garden combo theme, too!

Did you find any new books to check out? If you did, share w/ another SLP/teacher friend!
You asked, so here it is! A post about allllll the You asked, so here it is! A post about allllll the things we were able to work on with this St Patrick’s Day “party” we did last week! ☘️💚 

Swipe through ➡️ to see it broken down into separate parts! It can cover so many areas from speech sounds/ syllable shapes, play imitation, to WH questions, following directions, and categorizing!

Have a friend that would love this? Be sure to share this post and send it their way!
Who else loves interactive books?! These are some Who else loves interactive books?! These are some of my favorite things to make because they’re SO versatile for use across your caseload! You can use this one for…

➡️simple inferences
➡️labeling animal vocabulary 
➡️who questions
➡️what questions
➡️core vocab like “turn” “on” “not” “look” “see” “play” and “eat.” ➡️imitating animal sounds (great for CV and CVCV syllables) 
➡️yes/no questions

I’ve also been pairing “Let’s…” and “It’s…” phrases with my kids who are gestalt language processors working on mitigation (Let’s turn the page! Let’s see who it is, It’s a pig/cow/chicken etc…)

Swipe through to see some sample pages and to hear what other people are saying about this book!
TIP OF THE DAY: Print your science experiment visu TIP OF THE DAY: Print your science experiment visuals or cheat sheets 2 to a page to have a small, handy version in front of you to reference for yourself without taking up extra space! 

Speaking of space… Since we all know SLP workspaces can come at a premium in a school… what’s the worst place you’ve had to do therapy?

I haven’t had any seriously awful ones, but one that comes to mind was probably in the preschool/kindergarten pod, at a table just behind a noisy book fair setup.  That was the day one of my kids loudly asked me “Why you got a stick?” But she did d/st blends so it did NOT sound like “stick” and I was mortified and thought “Welp this is how I lose my job” 😂🤣 

Tell me yours below! ⬇️
Tell me with an emoji! Do you plan… 🌼 Just b Tell me with an emoji! Do you plan…

🌼 Just before a session

1️⃣ 1-2 weeks at a time

🦋 Have a weekly theme but wing it from there

😅 lol what’s planning

I always find the wide range of differences between all of us so interesting!
Story props are one of the best ways to keep kids Story props are one of the best ways to keep kids engaged during book reading- and reenacting a story with props is one of the strongest predictors of story comprehension!

Make sure you grab these free story visuals from my TPT store for Little Blue Truck’s Valentine for your therapy this week, and pair them with your farm toys! We ❤️ Little Blue Truck at home, too!

You can find these visuals at the link in my profile or let me know if you want me to DM you a direct link!
10 on the Sled has been my lifeline for planning t 10 on the Sled has been my lifeline for planning therapy since coming back from Christmas break, when every day I never know which kids will be out, which coworkers will be out, or who’s caseload I’ll be covering when I have said cancelations!

It’s been a minute since I’ve uploaded anything to TPT, and I’m super stoked about getting this 10 on the sled unit out to you!

When I was in the schools, it was always a challenge to find enough time to push in to the preschool rooms— there was always centers and literacy/language small group time, but when they’re only there for 3 hours (with recess in there, too) and there’s 30 kids to see during those 3 hours.. those two times are definitely not enough!

And, even though you’re adaptable and can make just about anything be a language activity.. sometimes it’s nice to come in with a plan vs crossing your fingers that whatever is happening during that time is relevant to you.  But, you also want to be respectful of the teacher’s focus during certain times of their day, too!

Juggling all the things.

So, when I create materials for you, I create things you can use to push in during even more times of the day to give you even more windows of opportunity.

▶️Story props to use with the class if you’re pushing in during whole group

▶️ Size concept play dough creation mats that you could use if you’re going in during a math center time.  Compare sizes.  Count how many long and short, big and small pieces you need.

▶️Fine motor-based activities like tracing lines, creating with popsicle sticks, and play dough pages so that maybe you can be a station during sign-in in the morning, too, after they work on their name with the teacher or OT!

The materials are so adaptable, though, that you can push in or pull out, use individually or in a small group, and lots of the pages can be used to target multiple goals at once.  Using real objects with the activities helps keep it play-based, too, to keep your little ones engaged!

So, whatcha think? Ready to check it out? Head over to the link in my profile or let me know if you want me to DM you the link!

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