The fall offers so many wonderful activity themes! As I mentioned in my previous post we did an apple themed activity which was a big hit since a lot of my little friends had gone apple picking. As we went into October, we did a few more fall themes.
Fire Prevention Week
Our classes did a lot of talking about fire safety and fire prevention at the beginning of October. We also had a member of the local fire department come in to talk to the students about fire safety and to show them some of the fire equipment they use to help keep everyone safe. The children really enjoyed it! I saw this cute idea online and decided it was a great way to talk about fire safety in the speech room while still working on students’ goals. This was a simple craft where we traced the students hands. For articulation students we wrote various words on the fingers for home practice. For my language based kids it was a great activity for following directions, working on prepositions, and requesting.
Leaves
During another week in October our theme was leaves. I seemed to have been too busy to take many pictures so I apologize! All sessions started with a book about the fall and about leaves. For my more older students, we read a early reader book about why and how leaves change colors in the fall. For my younger students we read a simple book about the leaves falling. Books are a great way to target language! For our craft we either cut and glued target words/pictures onto a pre-cut leaf or we added mini leaves of various color to a blank tree. Again crafts are a great way to work on following directions, comprehension of prepositions, requesting, etc! I always pair my crafts with a core vocabulary board along with a topic/fringe vocabulary board to provide visual supports for expressive language.
Halloween
We closed out the month with halloween themed activities. I found a cute little spooky house box at the dollar store. I slit a hole in the “roof” of the house and students loved putting in various cards into the “haunted house.” I used this activity for articulation drill as well as labeling drills for nouns and verbs. We of course read various halloween themed books. One of my pre-schoolers favorites are the Little People Halloween book with the different flaps on each page. It’s a big hit and a great way to work on commenting such as “I found a____” or “I see a_____.” We also did a craft with pre-cut pumpkins. We drew different faces on the pumpkins and talked about different feelings. We also used pre-cut pumpkins to glue different target words on to so students could take them home and practice. A co-worker of mine also gave me a great halloween themed worksheet that had big and little halloween themed clip art. It was a great way to work on concepts of big/little as well as requesting what colors to color them, if we should color big ones or little ones, etc. On Halloween our school lets the children come in in their costumes and we have a little parade in the parking lot for the parents. It is always so cute to see all the students in their costumes!