Mama-on-Days: Halloween Hijinks

I want my holidays to be filled with family traditions.  I spent a lot of time planning and creating Halloween events for my family while working hard to monitor my own expectations.   Sometimes I can get a little out of control with my planning and the way I think the event will go in my head.

For example, I enrolled the biscuit in gymnastics at the age of 3.  I was hoping to avoid the gender stereotypes.  I pictured me cheering him on as he did flips and somersaults.  I thought of how he might make friends with one of the other little boys in the class-and maybe we would go to the park and I could watch them play while I sipped Starbucks and chatted with his mother.  The reality was the Biscuit was the oldest boy in class full of cute 18 month-2 year old girls in tutus.  We went right after his daycare.  I spent the entire time sweating as he got up, wiggled, had difficulty following directions, and would run away from the group.  The most social interaction I got with the other mothers was pointed glares at my misbehaving boy.  Now I'm traumatized and we haven't done any "specialty programming" since.  

Anyhow, right before Halloween, the biscuit ended up with a horrible cough.  We took him into the doctor and she recommended that we skip trick or treating.  Ummmmm.......what?  Does she have kids?   I started asking everyone I know, consulting Facebook, even strangers trying to figure out a plan for Halloween day.

I made a parenting decision and decided to take him out bundled up.  He seemed to be feeling better and I knew he could have the weekend to sleep and recover.  We started with a plan to go to 5 houses which increased to 10 and then 11.  The Biscuit offered to draw me a map but then decided against it since he didn't know everyone's names in our neighborhood.  We got home and counted his candy-he got 50 pieces.

I made a special Halloween meal that he liked this year!

One of the skills that I lack-that I want to teach my son, is self control.  So when he asked how many pieces he could eat, I said he could eat as much candy as he wanted-until Monday when the Halloween fairy would come to collect his candy and leave a small gift.  I wasn't kidding about my lack of self control.  He spent about a half an hour choosing candies, putting them back, debating himself on which ones he should eat-candies he liked or candies he'd never tried before.  He ended up eating 11 candies on Halloween night.  That is a lot of candy-especially when eaten at such a fast rate.  I decided I would assist him with toothbrushing until the Halloween fairy came.  But then he was better.  He ate 4 pieces on Saturday and none on Sunday.  When he came home today and realized the Halloween fairy had been here he was super excited and ran around the house with his new small lego set I picked up on clearance.

I think I did okay.  But I still worry.  I worry that I get to stressed out, that I don't give him enough time, that we should do more activities.  This video gives me some comfort.  Even when we are doing things wrong, our kids still love us.


A New Perspective For Moms from Elevation Church on Vimeo.

How about you?  What things did you do on your Halloween?

Halloween: Tactile Cauldron

 Last year I saw a post about hiding objects in a Halloween cauldron filled with shredded paper.  Since we had a paper shredder at work, I picked up a cauldron at the local Goodwill.  BIG MISTAKE.  I couldn't stand the mess of the shredded paper-plus the paper would cling to my hands and got everywhere.  This year, I switched to split peas which I thought had a creepy greenish texture to it.  I just put the peas in the cauldron, filled it with different Halloween objects and used it in therapy in the following ways:

1.  Labeling/Halloween vocabulary:  We worked on actual labels as well as synonyms-a bat is scary.  Can you think of some other words for scary?  We also worked on describing the textures of the objects: hard, wet, slimy, squishy etc.
2.  Articulation practice: We hid our articulation cards in the peas and took turns taking them out and saying our words.
3.  Guess what I'm getting: The client could feel what was in the cauldron and then needed to describe it without naming it.

I think there are lots of ways you can use this within therapy.  What are some ways you could use it?  I'd love to hear from you!

Halloween: Creepy Spider activities

The other night I was working on finishing up a project when I saw a decent sized (but not monstrously large) spider crawling across my wall.  I looked around quickly for some spider killing equipment but didn't have any shoes or kleenexes handy.  Plus every once in awhile I start to think about reincarnation.  What if we come back as a spider and then everyone is smooshing us?  So I let it go.  About 45 minutes later, I saw it scurrying by again.  I think it had lapped my office.  Maybe he was just working out.  It wasn't until I went to bed that I started to wish I'd had more of a resolution to the whereabouts of this arachnid.

Anyhow, it reminded me of some Spider activities I've done in Halloween's past.  

Spider Cookie:  

I really didn't need any excuses for eating oreo cookies.  Mmmmmm.  We worked on sequencing cards, the concept, in between (as in put the legs in between the cookies) and just general drill activities while making a Halloween spider cookie.  I had a really hard time finding black string licorice and ended up getting Haribo Licorice wheels and pulling the licorice string out.  

Spider Toss Game:

I got the spider web rug at Target this year at their Dollar Spot.  Do you love the dollar spot too?  Besides end caps, it's my favorite shopping area.  I also picked up some glow in the dark spiders.  We worked on our targets and then took breaks by tossing spiders at the rug.  I added some point values on the rug with painters tape-but I don't think it's necessary.  It was pretty hard to get the spiders to land on the rug.  

The Spider and the Fly book:  

The spider keeps trying to convince the fly to come into his parlor.  The fly knows that she shouldn't and refuses him until the end.  I think this is a clever book for working on perspective taking and intentions. What do we know about spiders?  Would a spider just want to hang out with a fly?  

Need some more spider inspiration?  Check out All Ya'll Need's Spider week posting.
Or Download a Free Spider web activity from Crazy Speech World.  

Mama-on-days: The Halloween Meal

I'm obsessed with creating Family traditions.  I want to there to be magical moments in my son's childhood.  Last weekend, my husband and I went away on a romantic getaway that was marred by the fact that my brother in law needed to bunk with us.  Ixnay on the omanceray.  My mom was picking me up from the airport with my little guy.  I waved and he broke out into a run and jumped into my arms.  It was pretty awesome.  The whole morning he was Mr. lovey-dovey holding my hand, giving me hugs etc.  Until I ruined it by pretending to leave him behind at my mom's when he was being poky leaving.  And I know the experts say you should never do this as it tells your child you might abandon him.  He was so upset he didn't talk to me the whole ride home.  I probably have to start working a little harder on those magical moments!

True Confession Time: In my search for the best and most magical family moments, I sometimes turn into a Super-fun-time-beast.  I'm working on taming my expectations so that if things don't go the way I picture them in my head-that I'm still okay.

Last year, I was really interested in Bento Boxes and "themed" dinners/lunches.  I decided to make a "Halloween themed" dinner for the Biscuit.   The Another Lunch blog has these great ideas for Bento boxes and Muffin tin lunches.  I found a super cute halloween muffin tin lunch and decided to recreate it to make a "magical moment."

Of course I needed to buy a muffin tin, and little swords, and plastic condiment holders and a variety of other accompaniments because I wanted it to look exactly like hers.  

Here is what I ended up with:

 Pretty cute right?

Here is how the Biscuit reacted to it:

He hated it.  Didn't want to eat ANY of it.  Not even the chocolate eyeballs.  So I did what any self respecting mother who had planned this special meal for weeks and went to a variety of different store to get the correct items.  I put him in a time out in his room.

*Sigh*  He keeps asking for a themed meal again this year-so I guess he wasn't too traumatized-or he recognized that I was.  Of course the "meal" wasn't the end result that I was thinking it was.  It was us sharing any type of experience.  This year, I promise to spend less time thinking about the "perfect meal" and more time just enjoying our simple times together.

How about you?  Have you planned something and had go all wrong?  How do you manage your expectations?

Halloween Paper Craftivities: Rerun

Do you come up with new Holiday activities or do you tend to have your same Holiday activities that you use year after year?  I definitely have some of my favorite activities that I use.  I used to LOVE to scrapbook.  I'd go on Scrapbooking weekends, or all night Scrapathons.  I have a whole bunch of beautiful scrapbooks that I created.  Then I had a kid and stopped.  Does that make me a horrible mom?  I think you are supposed to at least shower your first kid with beautiful scrapbooks and baby books, right?  Not me.  Apparently I only like to scrapbook kegger parties and exotic vacations.  

But what do you do with your extra scrapbook supplies that you've hoarded over the years?  I try to use them up in Speech therapy crafts.  (the exotic vacation supplies at least.)  Here is a rerun of a post I did last year for 2 Paper crafts that I make each year:

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.

A gazillion Ghoulish Games and Apps

I was looking for an app similar to a Toca Boca app but that practiced trick or treating skills.  You could choose the costume and then go up to the door, say trick or treat and get a piece of candy.  Maybe you could pick the type of candy (good or bad like real eyeballs.)  I haven't found any apps that address that directly.  Here are some of the apps that I did find and how I might use them in therapy.

Mask Doodle App: Shoe the Goose.  I love to use cookie doodle to target actions and prepositions during therapy sessions.  This app allows you to decorate different masks (animals, monsters, half masks, robots, or people)  This is a great app to focus on directions such as put in/on, as well as focusing on colors or sizes.  You can create masks pretty quickly.  The best thing is that you can print out the mask and then work on role plays or just send it home.

Clicky Sticky Halloween App.  The Clicky Sticky apps are probably the best sticker book app on the market.  You can choose between different scenes including: pumpkin decorating, costumes, haunted houses and Halloween candy.  I usually use these apps to focus on naming objects/actions as well as prepositions.  Place the items on the scene and then press play to watch them move.  You can also work on predicting-"What do you think the spider will do/I think he will spin a web."

Mash-o-Ween.  I love MASH games for categorization and vocabulary generation.  This download focuses on naming different costumes, candies, activities you can do as well as people in your environment.  Draw a spiral and the app procedeeds to eliminate answers until your future is apparent.  This is a great way to focus on narratives as well as some predicting skills (what do you think will happen if I go to McDonalds in my cow costume.)

Halloween jokes.  This FREE download contains written jokes as well as some photo jokes and prank videos.  I tend to use the written portion most frequently to focus on multiple meanings and explaining humor.  The jokes are very basic (ex. what does a ghost put on his cereal in the morning?)  Booberries and boonanas.

Millie's tricks Volume 1 and 2.  These start with knocking on a door and then a wheel spins to see if you get a trick or treat.  Afterwards an adorable video focusing on a dog completing a similar activity is shown.  I use this a lot for sentence generation tasks.

Peek-a-boo Trick or Treat. I have LOVED Ed Emberly's books since I was little.  I still have old journals where I tried to use his shape based approach to draw different objects.  This is combines his artwork with the idea of Peekaboo Farm.  The door is knocking, you answer it and different Halloween characters appear.  This would be SUPER awesome if you were inside answering the door vs. outside.

 

Little Monster's Dentist.  This is a fun app for role play activities and discussing good dental hygiene with monsters.  I think there are better dentist apps out there but this was FREE so it's worth it to try it out.  

Halloween for Kids:  This FREE app just has slide shows of different pictures of Halloween events and items.  It's a nice one to use for describing and sentence structures.  

Spooky Differences.  Identify the differences between 2 pictures.  Some of the differences are pretty subtle.  I like to use these apps to work on comparison statements (Ex. in this picture there are three bats but in this picture there are only two.)

What was I scared of.  I LOVED reading this app with my son.  There is spooky music and a pair of "empty pants" which makes it a little silly while being a little scary.

Spooky House:  This is basically a cause and effect app that allows you to touch different parts of the screen to make things spooky things happen.  The full version contains 2 parts of the house and the free version is just on the outside.  If they had more inside options, I'd definitely recommend it.  Definitely take the time to check out the FREE version though.

Adapted Book, 5 Pumpkins.  I love this rhyme.  This version includes sign language for each version.

This is My Story.....and I'm sticking to it.  This app focuses on simple sentence structures.  You pick a "topic" and then choose different stickers to create a very simple story by changing one word per sentence.  For example, you could make your story about the ghost and then fill in the blank for sentences like, "The ghost said hello to ....."  

Magic Halloween Iblower.  I like apps for younger or more severely involved students which just provide different objects when you touch the screen.  With this app, touching the screen causes different Halloween objects to appear.  I use these for describing and naming.  I got this when it was free and like it.  I probably wouldn't spend money on it as there isn't any sound or sound effects with the app.  

Spooky Dice:  This was created by the people who came up with Story Dice.  You have the option to role 3 dice to determine character, plot and setting ideas.  Fun to work on sentence generation or shorter paragraph generation.

The Scariest Halloween Story Ever.  This is a fun interactive book which keeps trying to get the reader to stop reading because it is too scary.

Guess Who: Halloween.  I love the Guess who games.  I just bought this one so haven't had a lot of time to play around with it.

Mask Mania.  Why print out a mask when you can take a picture and put on virtual mask on your photo.  I wrote about this app last year.  So much fun for role playing and sentence structures ("I want to be, I am a "

What apps did I miss and why do you love them?

My Favorite Halloween Books for Speech Therapy

Have I mentioned that I live in the Halloween Capitol of the World?  I love Halloween and am lucky enough to be able to include Halloween lessons in my Speech therapy sessions.  I do make sure I check with individual parents first however.  Last year I stocked up on some Halloween titles.  

Here are some of my favorites:  

Boo Bunny: 

by Kathryn O. Galbraith:  

This is a pretty simple book but great for little ones who are working on imitating environmental sounds.  It's also great for working on rounded vowels.

Is That You, Wolf?

by Steven Cox:

I love pop up books-Each page requires you to put your hand in a pocket and feel something to see if it is the wolf.  This is a great book for working on adjectives. Plus there is a scary surprise at the end.  (I made the biscuit jump with this one...insert evil mom laughter here.)  

Goodnight Goon
by Michael Rex
After reading Goodnight Moon a gazillion times, I thought this was a funny parody.  Great for working on rhyming and short sentence imitation.

In the Haunted House
by Eve Bunting
This is a classic book.  I like that it seems kind of creepy as you read it and the surprise at the end.

Halloween Good Night by Doug Cushman.
This is a cute book where you talk about how you would tell different Halloween characters "Good night."  It uses a lot of "If you were" sentence structures.

Haunted House by Jan Pienkowski
Have I mentioned that I LOVE pop up books.  This is a classic pop up book where you open flaps and pull and push the flaps to make different actions happen.  Great for working on future and past tense forms: What will octopus do?  What did the octopus do?  Plus you open a toilet seat lid to find an animal inside.  Bathroom humor is ALWAYS hilarious.

Inside a House that is Haunted
By Alyssa Satin Capucilli
A great repetitive line book along the lines of There was an old lady who swallowed a ..... This is a great one to add actions to during group reading.

Mommy?  By Maurice Sendak
This is an amazing pop up book where the boy tries to find his mommy.  On each page, he simply says, "Mommy?" to different monsters.  Would be good to work on early CVCV imitation, question intonation and early reasoning skills (Do you think that is his mommy?)

The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything.  

by Linda Williams

Another repetitive line book-I use this to work on sound imitation, auditory memory and short sentence repetition.  This is another fun one to use with actions.  

Crankenstein

by Samantha Berger

I just ordered this one from Scholastic through my son's preschool (I always order a gazillion books-love, love, love Scholastic.)  The premise of a boy who turns into the monster Crankenstein when he doesn't get what he wants sounded perfect for some of my social thinking students.  I'll let you know once I get it.