Happy Halloween!

Over the past few weeks we have met a Little Baby Mummy, a square pumpkin named Spookley, and a Big Green Monster! I plan on posting about our activities tomorrow after school, but wanted to quickly post a picture of the homemade costumes my boyfriend and I wore this year...

 

 

 

and wish everyone a very happy Halloween! 

The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin

Spookley is visiting my speech room all week! We have been having lots of fun with the interactive app, learning vocabulary, and saying our speech words to color pumpkins. I will give a Halloween update next week :)

 



 





All Wrapped Up In Speech!



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We were feeling very festive this week in speech! We read Where's My Mummy? by Carolyn Crimi. This book is one of my favorites! It is an adorable story about Little Baby Mummy, who wants to play one last game of Hide & Shriek with Big Mama Mummy before going to bed. He then goes on an adventure where he meets a few spooky characters, and one not so spooky character before being reunited with his "mummy." This book is perfect for Halloween, discussing family, making text-to-self connections, sequencing, and playing up puns!

 

 

After we read the book, we made our own mummies! I pre-cut black circles for the eyes, cut white construction paper into strips for the bandages, and used a paper plate as the face. I asked my language groups comprehension questions about the story, and for each question they answered, they earned a bandage. I did this with my speech groups, as well, but they had to say target words for their bandages! Here's a picture of our mummies outside of my room:

 

 

As the students glued their bandages, I asked them about a time they were scared and what their mummy did to make them feel better. For my PK & kindergarten kiddos, I wrote their answers on a printed prompt for them that said:

 

"Today we read Where's My Mummy? and made text-to-self connections!

When I'm scared, my mummy...."

 

I got some pretty good answers! I then glued the response onto black construction paper where I taped on the mummy face. Here's a picture of my favorite response of the day:

 

 

 

Trash or Treasure?!

While I was sitting in a wonderful training over the summer, our speaker introduced a game she had made to play with one of her students called "Sentence Jail." She created nonsense sentences that were placed in "jail." In order to set these sentences "free," the student had to decide if they made sense or not. If not, he would fix them and turn them into real sentences. We were able to watch a pretty lengthy video of her playing this game, and her student was very engaged, which got me thinking....

 

 

and Trash or Treasure? was born! I picked up a table top trash can from Target (where I buy everything I don't order from Amazon, eBay, or Etsy!). I create sentences related to my student loaded with incorrect pronoun use, grammar, punctuation, and capitalization & crinkle them up. They then become "trash" that my student has to turn into "treasure" by correcting all of the mistakes. So far, I only use this with one student who has language goals that target her writing skills, and she loves it! You could easily adapt this game to target articulation goals, too!

 



Frankenstein Makes A Visit & There Was An Old Lady...

Frankenstein made a visit to speech this week! I was finally able to decorate my door for Halloween on Friday afternoon! Here is my Pinterest inspired masterpiece....

I also must apologize for not posting in almost a month! I let life get the best of me, but I promise to be posting more and more :) Last week we read There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves by Lucille Colandro in my speech room!

 

First, I read the book aloud while asking comprehension questions throughout the story as I read. Then, I read the book again, but this time I had the kids feed the old lady as I read. I inherited this snazzy old lady from Mrs. Kristin Cummings over at Simply Speech! The kids had a blast feeding her! I used the (free!) printables from 3 Dinosaurs mentioned on Simply Speech. I laminated one set of the printables in color for the kids to feed the old lady, so that I can keep them for next year. Here is where you can find them!

After we fed her, each student made their own old lady. I used Jenn Alcorn's Feed the Granny activity from her There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Books Language Unit that I purchased from her TpT store. You can download it here. I cut out the granny's face and taped a plastic bag to the back. As we retold the story, the kids labeled the back of each picture and fed their own old lady (sequencing)!

 

This week my language groups are reading Where's My Mummy? by Carolyn Crimi. I absolutely love it! It is an adorable story to share with the little ones near Halloween! If you don't have a copy, I would definitely grab one! My speech groups are doing some activities that I will be using in my speech centers next week. I'll be sure to give an update at the end of the week :)