Therapy Themes: Halloween
It’s hard to believe it’s the beginning of October. What a weird year it’s been. Somehow and not surprisingly, I still feel like it’s mid-March. There’s no doubt that fall is my favorite season and with Halloween just around the corner, I’ve planned a few Halloween-themed therapy sessions.
As with all of my therapy theme blog posts, these activities can and should be tailored to each and every kiddo you’re working with. I’ve used the below activities with many of my elementary school-aged kiddos with language and articulation goals. I hope this post serves as inspiration for a fun and festive Halloween session.
Snowmen at Halloween: I love all the variations of Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner and this Halloween version is no exception. As you read the story, you learn all the ways snowmen celebrate Halloween. This lends itself to targeting narrative language and story sequencing goals. The illustrations by Mark Buehner are fantastic, so it’s an effective book to target descriptive language skills as you describe the intricate costumes of each snowman and comment on which you like best. This is also a fantastic book for /s/ blends, as there are many words beginning with /s/ clusters embedded within the story (e.g., “snowmen,” “sled,” “snowflake,” “sneaky,” “spooky,” “scary”).
Guess the Halloween Painting: Similar to Headbanz, I use this game to target inferencing, convergent naming, use of semantic features to describe objects, and language organization. This is a really effective game for kiddos who have difficulty organizing their thoughts within conversation.
Halloween Topic Maintenance: In addition to the above Guess the Painting deck, I’ve used this Halloween-themed conversation deck to work on question formulation and conversation maintenance. Each of the cards within this Topic Maintenance decks displays a person or character (e.g., scarecrow, ghost) with a speech bubble. The speech bubble displays a conversational cliffhanger (e.g., “I don’t like that kind of candy”) that one would typically respond to in conversation. Depending on the version of the Boom Card deck (i.e., select a response or open-ended), the child then identifies the appropriate question (i.e., receptive goal) or formulates an appropriate question (i.e., expressive goal) to respond to that statement. I’ve linked both versions below, so you can use one and/or both depending on your kiddos’ goals.
Cariboo - Halloween Edition: I have a subscription to the Simply Digital SLP Club and Brooke makes THE best materials! Cariboo is one of my favorite games to use in therapy, as it’s motivating for kiddos and can be easily personalized to a variety of goals. In this version, kids open spooky doors in search of the balls that eventually lead them to the Halloween treasure. You can personalize the game to each kiddo by adding in photos of your articulation or language targets that are revealed after opening each door.
What’s your favorite Halloween book or activity to use in therapy?