Happy Halloween Therapy Treats!
Halloween is just a few short weeks away and those who read my blog often know how much I love the holidays and festive therapy sessions!
Last October I wrote a post filled with simple ways to add a little Halloween fun to your therapy sessions. The post was called Halloween Therapy: Tricks n' Treats and featured ideas such as: carving a pumpkin, making a construction paper pumpkin face, dressing up in costumes, face-painting, reading Halloween books, painting with Halloween stamps, making pumpkin-flavored milkshakes and singing Halloween songs, such as Five Little Pumpkins!
Acknowledging the fact that we need to provide routines-based therapy sessions, some of you may wonder if making milkshakes and painting with Halloween stamps is really part of a child's daily routine. My answer to you is YES! As I have mentioned in previous posts, I believe that you are not only addressing any speech issues that may arise during this time of year, but you can also hone in on specific skills, such as vocabulary development related to the season, sentence building, making requests and choices, answering questions and following directions, etc. AND, if the materials being used are fun and novel, many times the child will be even more interested and willing to "use their words" and engage in a family activity.
In addition, if the family is crafty or likes to bake and cook, you can nurture these interests in your sessions. However, if they do not usually engage in activities such as those mentioned, but would like to, therapy is a wonderful place to start!
Here are some fresh, festive ideas for Halloween 2009:
- Construction Paper Candy Corn—Using the traditional candy corn colors (white, yellow and orange) cut out the large, medium and small triangle shapes. Yellow, the bottom piece is the biggest, orange is the medium triangle which goes on top next and the white triangle is the smallest and is glued at the very top. Make it as big or as small as you want and always provide a visual model. Add google eyes to the candy corn and you can use them to engage the child in pretend play and practice sentence expansion.
- Feeding Therapy—Make it festive and tasty! Make pumpkin muffins with orange and black sprinkles or roll out your own sugar cookies using spooky cookie cutters. Kids love to help cook and many times even the pickiest eaters will taste their own creations.
- Halloween Sticker Scene—Kids love stickers! This is a simple activity to help with making choices, developing vocabulary and building sentences. Use simple stickers, such as: ghost, bat, cat, pumpkin, etc. and have the child choose the ones they want to make a spooky Halloween scene.
What other treats do you have in your Halloween Therapy Bag?!