I love October! Between pumpkins, fall weather, the leaves changing colors, apple picking, and Halloween excitement, there are so many opportunities to make speech and language therapy engaging and meaningful.
If you’re looking for some therapy ideas to keep your students engaged this month, here are some easy ways to incorporate fall themes into your speech therapy sessions.
1. Target Language Skills with a Pumpkin Theme
Pumpkins are a perfect way to work on a variety of language goals across a variety of ages and skills.
Try using pumpkin pictures, real pumpkins, or pumpkin-themed books and activities to target:
- Describing: Identify a pumpkin’s color, size, shape, texture, and other features.
- Vocabulary: Introduce words such as stem, seeds, pulp, harvest, and carve.
- Compare and contrast: Compare pumpkins of different sizes, colors, or shapes.
- Following directions: Give directions involving positional concepts, colors, and quantities.
- WH-questions: Ask questions about pumpkin growth, uses, and seasonal traditions.
- Sequencing: Explain the steps for carving a pumpkin or planting pumpkin seeds.
Encourage students to use complete sentences and add descriptive vocabulary. Students working on higher-level language can explain how pumpkins grow, make predictions, or compare different pumpkins or pumpkins and apples.
2. Work on Descriptive Language with a Fall Mystery Bag
A mystery bag is a simple way to encourage students to use descriptive language, ask questions, and make predictions. Have students decorate their mystery bags using stickers, markers, magazine pictures, etc. Place familiar objects or fall-themed items in a bag. Students can take turns feeling or examining an object without immediately naming it.
Encourage students to describe:
- What it looks or feels like.
- Its shape, size, color, or texture.
- What it is used for.
- Where someone might find it.
- What clues help identify it.
Other students can ask questions and use the clues to guess the object.
This activity can target describing, categorization, vocabulary, inferencing, asking/answering questions, turn-taking, and so much more!
3. Incorporate Fall Books into Speech Therapy
Seasonal books are a great way to target multiple goals within a single session.
4. Keep Articulation Practice Seasonal
Seasonal themes can make articulation practice feel fun without changing the structure of your established therapy routine.
Create a fall-themed word list featuring students’ target sounds. For example, depending on the student’s speech goals, you might use words such as pumpkin, spider, candy, leaf, scarecrow, or costume.
Students can practice target words at the word, phrase, sentence, or conversational level. Practice target words while playing a game, using a picture description task, or a short story to encourage carryover into connected speech.
Grab your FREE fall themed articulation list HERE!
5. Craft Ideas (that aren’t Halloween!)
Looking for fun October crafts that don’t involve Halloween? Try making a stained-glass leaf using construction paper, clear contact paper, and colorful tissue paper.
You can also go on a fall scavenger hunt to find big and small items, such as leaves, acorns, and pinecones.
Encourage students to describe what they find while targeting concepts like big, small, look, and find. Apple, pumpkin, and leaf themed crafts are other fun ways to celebrate the season while incorporating vocabulary, following directions, describing, asking and answering questions, and requesting.
6. Apples vs Pumpkins Recipe
One of my favorite fall activities is making a variety of apple and pumpkin recipes with my students and then comparing which ones they like best! This is a fun, hands-on way to target a variety of skills, including following multistep directions, sequencing, fine motor skills, and daily living skills. I especially love comparing pumpkin pie milkshakes with applesauce to see which one is the favorite. Of course, you can choose whichever seasonal recipes are your personal favorites to make this activity fun and meaningful for your students.
Happy fall!
Nicole
Leave a Reply