Halloween Paper Crafts

I was at Archivers (a scrapbook store) a few years ago (when I still had time to scrapbook.)  They have die cut machines which allow you to punch shapes out of scrabooking paper.  One of the punches was of a fence and the other one I made was of a house with a door that you can open. 

Last week, we used these shapes to make Halloween paper crafts, focusing on following directions, stating directions, requesting supplies, and articulation/intelligibility.

1.  Five Little Pumpkins: 

I glued the "gate" onto blue paper and also cut out the 5 little pumpkins rhyme using a cloud shape before the therapy session.  In the past, I've used different stickers to make the pumpkins. Last year I found a really cool pumpkin hole puncher on clearance that included 3 different stamps to decorate the pumpkins.  Here is how I used it in therapy:

1.  Requesting: punch out the pumpkin, I do it, you do it, I want the pumpkin stamp, (ready, set...) GO. 
2.  Labeling locations: Put the pumpkin on the fence, under the moon, next to the cloud etc.
3.  Following directions (for this I hid the five pumpkins)  The child had to find the pumpkins I hid (ex. find the pumpkin under your chair) and then bring them back to glue onto the gate.
4.  /s/ Blends: stamp, stick, sticky, Spooky, scary,
5.  Emotions: I had my social skills kids work on drawing different emotions on the pumpkins
6.  Articulation homework:  After we were finished, I highlighted all of the sounds/words I wanted the parents to work on in the poem.

2.  Spooky House

I used the house die cut and punched out a bunch of houses onto black scrapbooking paper.  I took pictures of some of the kids making scared faces (always get consent for photos first) and then printed them off using the contact sheet portion.  It worked better to print the pictures off on photo paper, regular copy paper printed too dark.  I also wished I'd taken a picture of the whole child and printed it off even smaller so that their whole body fit in the door. 

I put the child behind the door and then glued everything onto the blue paper.   Then the child got to add the stickers to the picture. 
1. Emotions:  We practiced making scary faces and talked about what different parts of our face do when we are scared.  We also talked about strategies for what to do when things are scary.
2.  Articulation:   Kid'n'Kaboodle had a variety of fingerplays and I varied the poem based on what sounds I was working on with the child.
3.  Vocabulary: I didn't have a lot of stickers, but it was also a good activity for naming or requesting. 
4.  Role playing: We also talked about how to go trick or treating. We could practice knocking on the door, opening it, saying trick or treat and then getting candy. 

Halloween masks

I used to have a whole box of masks and novelty headbands.  "Ex. I'm a rabbit, I'm the devil etc."  _  that I would use in speech therapy.  I left it at an on old job and found that I missed it.

1.  Eye Contact/Facial Referencing:  There's nothing like putting on a pair of rabbit ears or a hamburger hat to increase facial referencing.  I'd try to do it when kids weren't expecting it, so they knew they needed to look at me to make sure I wasn't wearing something silly. 
2.  Greetings:  For this activity, I'd hide outside the therapy room and knock on the door.  I'd wait for them to ask me to come in and then we would work on greetings plus name (Hi, hamburger head.) 
3.   Perspective Taking/Conversation Skills:  For this activity we both choose a mask or headband.  Then we think about what the other person might like to talk about.  I saw some presidential masks earlier this year at Target, but I don't know that I would go there yet.

I recently found a really fun FREE app called Mask Mania.  Take a picture with your Ipad and then
you put a variety of masks on your face.  They have a lot of masks to try: Batman, clowns, princesses, Dwight from the Office among others.

I ended up upgrading to the paid version as I wanted to be able to print out some of the pictures of my husband and son.  The free version would be fine for therapy-you just can't save or print the pictures.

Here is how I've used in therapy:
1.  Requesting information/actions: "What am I?,"   "Can I see it?" 
2.  Sentence Structure:  I am a clown.
3.  20 questions:  Am I a Superhero, Am I a girl etc.
4.  Stating opinions:  I like it, I don't like it.
5.  Stating reasons:  I don't like it because I'm scared of clowns. 

Guess What I am is a fun game similar to Headbandz.  It has a lot of community helpers which is nice if you are doing a unit on occupations.  It's a little hard because you need to keep holding the page up to your head.  I play it with the kids to target:

• Question forms
• Deductive and expressive reasoning
• Describing:  Sometimes I play it where we have to describe what the other person is without using the verbal label. 
• Perspective taking:  A lot of my kids have trouble understanding that the picture on their head is DIFFERENT than the picture on my head.  They also have to work on not stating what I am when giving me clues or answering questions

Making Masks:
You could follow up by having the children make masks.  I usually go with the paper plate variety.  However, these printable masks by Bessie Pooh at Etsy are SO cute.  They are on my wishlist  for fun prizes and reinforcers. 

More Squinkie Syntax, please

For the record, I don't receive any kickbacks nor do I own any stock in Squinkies.  Yet, here I sit with another "Squinkie" activity.  Squinkies are tiny soft plastic action figures.  You can get sets of different super heroes, princesses, pokemon, and cars characters among others.  (FYI, Costco has sets of 3 for Princesses and Superheroes right now).  I'm fond of them because they allow me to incorporate a child's special interest into therapy and they are small enough that they store easily. 

Today, I have a freebie for Superhero Silly Syntax Sentences.  I was looking for an activity that would give me multiple repetitions to teach the targeted sentence form while maintaining interest and motivation levels.

Here is how I used it in therapy:

1.  To practice Third Person singular:  I set up the Squinkies on the right, then I chose a verb card.  The child needed to say the first sentence, move the verb card down and say the next sentence.  Since some of the sentences were silly, it was really motivating and we were able to get lots of practice in.  (Ex. I bite Captain America, You bite the girl, He bites Beast  etc.)
2.  Auxiliaries:  I added auxiliary forms so you can work on sentences such as : I will bite Captain America etc.)
3.  Questions:  Moving the auxiliary form to the front of the sentence and now you are addressing question reversal forms: "Will I bite Captain America?  Yes, I will bite Captain America."

You can download the freebie here at my TPT store:  Superhero Syntax