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October is filled with Halloween activities and fun events at my house.  Last Saturday, I was lucky enough to see Garrison Keillor perform at the high school where he graduated.  It was a great show and so fun to see him in my hometown.  Check out the podcast of the show.   I did learn that it is really, really hard to sit in bleacher seats with thousands of other people for over 2 hours.  Today, I’m excited to link up with the frenzied SLPs to share some great Halloween themed activities.  I know you will find some fantastic ideas to make your week easier!

My favorite Halloween Activities

Halloween Jokes:

I love using jokes in therapy with my social thinking students.  It’s a great way to work on higher level language skills, determining multiple meaning words and being able to use language flexibly vs. in a black and white manner.  Here’s one of my favorites:  Why don’t ghosts like the rain?  It dampens their spirits.  Haha.  I love Halloween jokes.  Head on over to the mom with a lesson plan blog to pick up a free copy of Halloween jokes.

Trick or Treat Practice:

Practicing the steps of trick or treat is a fun way to work on various language activities.  I like to work on pragmatic language (saying thank you, what to say if you don’t like the candy, what to say if they don’t know what your costume is).  With my younger clients, we use a Fisher price haunted house.  I like to hide speech cards in the house.  The client makes the character walk up to the door and ring the bell.  It makes a spooky noise and a ghost pops out of the chimney.  Check out my affiliate link to see more.  Fisher Price Little People Trick-Or-Treat Surprise

One of my favorite Halloween products in my TPT store is my flip flap trick or treat activity.  My clients have so much fun working on a variety of language activities-they don’t even realize that they are doing work:

Halloween Snacks:

I love snacks that you can complete in a few steps.  I’m currently working on a new snack-tivity product, “Dirt cups” which is easily adapted as a Halloween activity.  I made up the pudding and Oreo® dirt this weekend.  I’ll be using this with groups to focus on sequencing, creating full sentences and procedure retell.  Looking for healthier alternatives?  I love this list of 50 different Halloween (non-candy) recipes.

Gummy Body parts:

I always find funny gummy body parts like eyeballs, ears, or brains (perfect for brain in the group activities) around Halloween time.  I try to stock up on these products the day after Halloween.  I did pick up these awesome gummy tongues.  I’m using them with my students who are working on /k/ and /r/.

Social Skills Materials:

Speaking of clearance, this is a great time to stock up on social thinking materials.  I’ve picked up some Brain jello molds to talk about flexible/rock brain, eyeball ping pong balls to talk about “listening with your eyes” and fake hands to talk about “keeping your hands to your self.”  You can get some great “body part” paraphernalia to talk about idioms too.  It’s way more fun to talk about “eyes on me” when you are using sticky eye balls.  A few years ago, I picked up these great brain jello molds on clearance.  I love the zones of regulation products, and I’ve carried over teaching of these skills using floral colored stones and the jello molds.

I’ve also used my brain molds to teach the idea of red thoughts/green thoughts.  A few years ago, I read a fantastic post from the Speech House blog regarding teaching “weird and good thoughts.”  This is  a Michelle Garcia Winner concept and the author used marbles to teach the concept that is okay for people to have a few “weird thoughts” about us, as long as they have more good thoughts in the cup.  I LOVE using my brain molds to show how expected behaviors can “cover” up some unexpected behaviors and people will still be our friends.

Pumpkin Hunt

I love Easter egg hunts, so when I saw these jack o lantern eggs, I had to pick some up.  I’m using them to work on prepositions and following directions.  I’ve also just copied worksheets and cut out the target questions/pictures activities and put them in the egg.

I’d love to hear what you are doing for Halloween if you are allowed to celebrate in your setting.  Check out the rules for linking up below.