Switch the Witch Game

  

Switch the Witch is another game created by David Sindrey.  Much like his other game I featured, "Halloween Meanies," I love using it because of the ability to choose whatever target I want to while playing it.  You can target articulation, expressive vocabulary, auditory discrimination, receptive understanding of verbal descriptions, answering questions, or practicing grammar targets.  The ability to vary targeted skills makes this game very repeatable without the students losing interest.  You do need at least two players, and I think it works best with three (even if you are the third player).  You need 16 picture cards to represent your targeted skill(s).  You then hide the "witch faces" and "magic wands" under the picture cards.  I like to use paper clips so that I can pick them up without revealing what's underneath.  Before you start the game you have the students select which mouth, nose, and hat to put on the "Witch of the Year" poster to start the game.  To play the game students take turns picking a picture card.  After practicing their speech or making a sentence (whatever you have decided is the targeted skill), they slide the witch face or wand from behind.  If they get a witch face they hold onto it until the end of the game.  If they get a magic wand, then they "Switch the Witch" and can change one part of the witch pictured on the poster (mouth, nose, or hat).  There is some strategy to this game, as students need to realize they should change the part that will help them win.  At the end of the game, when all the picture cards have been played, whoever has the witch face that matches the witch on the poster wins the game. 

Making Play Dough and Friendly Sabotage

The recipe I like best:

2 Cups flour

1 Cup Salt

2 Tbsp. Cream of Tartar

2 Tbsp. Vegetable Oil

2 Cups Water

Food coloring

Cook in electric frying pan

Making playdough with the preschool classroom is one of my favorite activities.  We often do it once a month.  It is easy to involve the students and at the end they have something fun to use in their classroom during centers.  Most often I make the color that matches the season or holiday.  This month it was "orange" like a pumpkin.  When making the playdough a secondary color I like to pretend I don't have that color food coloring.  Then we mix two primary colors to "see what happens".  

This activity is great for eliciting core language as well as language in general, but the key is friendly sabotage.  When a child comes up to the table where the pan and ingredients are waiting, I will greet them and then just stare and wait.  I'm looking for that student to use a word or sign (or more) to ask for what they need (ex. Cup, spoon, I want, flour, my turn, etc.).  Once the student has the cup/spoon and asks me to "pour" the ingredient, I do so with the bag closed or cap on so that nothing comes out.  I'm trying to elicit a request to "open".  Once we have opened the ingredient and the student then again requests that I "pour", I will ask "where" and then proceed to pretend to pour it on the floor or on their head.  I'm hoping to elicit "in", "in the cup", or "in the spoon".  My other sabotage technique is to say I forgot to bring the water and have the students try to problem solve where we can get some.  There is a sink in the classroom, and my hope is they will tell me to get it there.  This is a much needed opportunity to practice the vocabulary word of "sink" as most of my students will call it some variation of "wash hands".  Throughout the pouring of ingredients we talk about empty/full and I have the students tell me when to "stop" pouring.  I always involve the students in counting the drops of food coloring as I add them.  Word of advice, if you are mixing anything with yellow (blue/yellow, red/yellow), I recommend doubling the yellow in comparison to the other color.  For a little extra fun, sometimes I add an extract to give it a scent as well.  It is best to store the playdough, once it's cooled, in a gallon plastic bag.    

 
 

ASL Halloween I Have...Who Has Game

 

 

Even though I use sign language expressively and receptively on a daily basis, I still struggle with fingerspelling, particularly receptive fingerspelling.  This Halloween-themed "I Have...Who Has?" game, available for free download on Teachers Pay Teachers, is a great way to practice both expressive and receptive ASL fingerspelling.  Knowing the theme gives a context to help aid understanding. I would suggest that if you download this game for use that you enlarge the cards before cutting and laminating.  The printed letter signs are a bit small and can be difficult to see subtle differences.         

Fall Scene Barrier Activity - Predetermined Targets/Outcomes

I use barrier activities so often in my therapy.  They are a great way to target auditory skill development for students with cochlear implants or hearing aids.  But they are also perfect for working on receptive and expressive language (vocabulary and grammar), giving and following directions, and basic concept development for any student on your caseload.  Often times, however, the students get so caught up on what they want to say when it's their turn that they aren't able to be clear and concise.  Their peers lose interest while they formulate their thoughts.  Also, students tend to use simple, less complex directions and make very standard choices (ex. sun yellow, apple red).  By giving the students a completed picture, I can control the complexity and help eliminate some of the prior issues described.  In addition, by giving each student the same picture colored differently, they have a closed set to refer to when listening to their peer.  They also have a blueprint for the expectations.  

I use game boxes to create barriers between the students.  It's important to use ones that are tall enough to block visual access to the students' papers but not to block visual and auditory access to their peers' mouths when talking or hands when signing.  If it's a true auditory/listening activity using the acoustic hoop, then you just want to make sure there aren't barriers to sound waves traveling through the air from speaker to listener.  To increase the complexity of the activity, you can target multi-step directions (ex. "Color the leaf in the basket yellow and color the wagon handle blue.").  I typically wait to see what the receiving student understood/remembered before offering assistance.  This type of activity has built in opportunities for practicing communication breakdown repair.  In the end, even when a direction has been successfully understood, I like to repeat it myself so I can model the appropriate word order, usage, and grammar.  
 

Halloween Rhyming I Have...Who Has Game

While the cochlear implant and other advances in hearing technology have made learning to read using a sound-based approach more achievable, both phonological and phonemic awareness can be very challenging for students with hearing loss, even with amplification.  That said, it isn't the same for these students as students with normal hearing and shouldn't be treated that way.  This blog post is not to get into the nitty gritty of teaching reading and literacy to Deaf and Hard of Hearing students.  I do, however, want to highlight one of the skills that I observe to be challenging pretty consistently for most of my students...and that is rhyming.  I've noticed some correlations over the years, none of which should surprise anyone.  My students that are reading on grade level are typically better at rhyming.  My students that have age-appropriate (or pretty close) speech articulation skills are also better at rhyming.  These students are the ones that can generate rhyming words regardless of spelling patterns (ex. hairy/scary, rolled/cold).  Another pattern I have noted is that many of my students, when asked to generate a rhyme to a target word, will change the end of the word instead of the beginning (ex. cat/car/cab).  For my students that are really struggling with rhyme, they more often name a semantically-related word (ex. cat/dog).  I do my best to help them visually see rhyme, using word families (ex. sat/cat/hat/mat), but to "hear" rhyme you need really good access.  My students with cochlear implants and those with unilateral loss definitely fair better than my students with bilateral hearing aids.  However, many of my students with early access to sound through cochlear implants struggle in this area.

This Halloween-themed "I Have...Who Has" game using rhyming words is a fun way to target and practice rhyming.  It is available for free download on Teachers Pay Teachers.  It is also great for working on auditory skill development, listening to both adult and peer spoken English.  This is a particularly challenging game for targeting listening skills because the targets are single words without context or a closed set, in essence open set identification.  When we play this game in therapy, once a card is read aloud it is laid down on the table.  This allows everyone to see the the written word and use the spelling patterns to help find the rhyming word.  Some of the words in this game are also great for a quick vocabulary lesson (handy, thud, grave, motion, potion, gloom, cones, goon).  

 

Halloween Meanies Game

  

This time of year one of my students' favorite games to play in therapy is "Halloween Meanies".  This game was created by David Sindrey and is available on speechtree.ca for download.  Halloween Meanies  One of the reasons I love using it is the ability to choose whatever target I want to while playing it.  You can target articulation, expressive vocabulary, auditory discrimination, receptive understanding of verbal descriptions, answering questions, or practicing grammar targets.  The ability to vary targeted skills makes this game very repeatable without the students losing interest.  You just need 16 picture cards to represent your targeted skill(s).  You then hide the "meanies" and "candy bags" under the picture cards.  I like to use paper clips so that I can pick them up without revealing what's underneath.  The other reason I really love this game is, like many of David Sindrey's games, it's a cooperative game of luck.  The students either win together or lose together, so there are no hard feelings.  

To use this game to target auditory skill development, you simply need to add the use of the auditory hoop and careful selection of your 16 targets.  For example, you might choose words differing by presence or absence of a word final consonant (boo-boot, bye-bike-bite, bow-boat, etc.) or presence or absence of plural -s (black cat/black cats, pumpkin/pumpkins, etc.).  At a lower level, you might target words differing by syllable number (witch vs. pumpkin vs. Frankenstein vs. Jack-o-lantern).  Or at a higher level, you might target sentence level discrimination (She is trick-or-treating vs. He is trick-or-treating, He is picking a pumpkin vs. He is carving a pumpkin.).  The only downfall to make this a listening activity is that you as the clinician are choosing what pictures get looked under, so make sure you have no idea where you have hidden the meanies and the candy bags.

 

Jack O' Lantern Songs

 

"Jack O' Lantern" song (sung to the tune of "Daniel Boone")

Born in a pumpkin patch in my backyard.

Where Mr. Scarecrow stands on guard.

Born in a patch, where he knew every weed.

Before he was a pumpkin, he was a pumpkin seed.

Jack O'

Jack O' Lantern,

King on Halloween Night!

"Jack O' Lantern" song (sung to the tune of "Mary Had a Little Lamb")

Jack O' Lantern smiling bright,

Smiling bright, smiling bright.

Witches flying in the night.

It is Halloween!

Ghosts and goblins, cats and bats,

Cats and bats, cats and bats.

  Witches with their funny hats.

It is Halloween!

Where is Baby's Pumpkin?

Where is Baby's Pumpkin - Amazon

Another book I like to read this time of year in therapy sessions is "Where is Baby's Pumpkin?" from the Karen Katz lift-the-flap series.  It is highly relatable, simple, predictable, and visually and tactilely appealing.  It uses Halloween-themed vocabulary and embeds spatial concepts (in, behind, under, etc.).  Depending on the student(s), you can elicit various levels of language to make a request from the child to see what is behind the flaps (ex. See, I want to see, I want to look under the bed).    

BUMP (Context Clues and Idioms) Halloween!

 

 

This game is available free for download on Teachers Pay Teachers.  It was created by Games 4 Gains.  While it is intended for grades 3rd-6th, I have found it to be best for my 5th-9th graders.  

 

Two of the things my students find most challenging, particularly my Deaf and Hard of Hearing students, is using context clues to determine the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary and idioms.  Figurative language in general is very challenging.  This game is a fun and motivating way to practice these skills.  And because it's a turn-taking activity, each target vocabulary word or idiom is likely to get multiple repetitions and therefore become more meaningful and more likely to be remembered.  

"On Halloween" song

 

One of my students' favorite songs this time of year is "On Halloween" sung to the tune of "Wheels on the Bus".  I printed and laminated a picture of a haunted house and added velcro all around it.  I then printed out the pictures of the ten things we might sing about, laminated, and added velcro to them as well.  I typically use this in my large group/whole class lesson in preschool but have done it in therapy with just 1-2 students at a time as well.  Typically I do it in the smaller setting to pre-teach it so that they are more successful participating in the whole class activity.  This type of interactive song allows for turn-taking and for the students to make choices as to what they want to sign about.  I did not write this song.  I found it on the internet a number of years ago, but have not been able to find the exact same one again to give proper credit to the creator.  

Possible verses include:

The cat in the house says

"Hiss! Hiss! Hiss!"  

"Hiss! Hiss! Hiss!"  

"Hiss! Hiss! Hiss!"  

The cat in the house says "Hiss! Hiss! Hiss!"  

On Halloween.

The owl in the house says

"Whoo! Whoo! Whoo!"

The scarecrow in the house says

"Shoo! Shoo! Shoo!"

The mummy in the house says

"Mmmm.  Mmmm. Mmmm."

The spider in the house says

"Spin! Spin! Spin!"

The ghost in the house says

"Boo! Boo! Boo!"

The bat in the house says

"EEK! EEK! EEK!"

The witch in the house says

"Heh.  Heh.  Heh."

The monster in the house says 

"GRRR. GRRR. GRRR."

The kids in the house say

"Trick or Treat! Trick or Treat! Trick or Treat!"

Boo Who?

 

 Boo Who - Amazon

I LOVE Halloween!!!  And I love using lift-the-flap books in speech/language therapy.  This book is a great way to combine these loves.  For some students I will simply read this book and have them guess what is behind each flap.  However, for many of my students with limited language and expressive vocabulary (in any mode - spoken or signed), it is very difficult to "guess".  So, I have created a set of laminated picture options that I place on the table in front of the student.  I, of course, label these pictures in speech and sign as I put them down.  This allows my students a closed set of possible responses and gives them the opportunity to guess without having to speak or sign.  

To make this book a listening activity targeting auditory skill development, I read the pages behind my acoustic hoop.  Having the pictures to choose from helps them map meaning onto the language they are "hearing". 

As always, lift-the-flap books allow you to elicit core language as you hold the book out of the student's reach until they use their communication skills to request (ex. see or look, I want to see, open, more, my turn, etc.).    

Auditory Skill Development, Concept Development, Fall Vocabulary

 

  

Using simple pictures from the internet that I printed in three different sizes and laminated, I like to target auditory skill development, expressive and receptive vocabulary, and early basic size concepts using the crowd-pleasing "mailbox toy."  In the fall we mail big, medium, and small pictures of pumpkins, apples, leaves, and acorns.  By pairing the size with the object you are targeting listening for two critical elements.  I make and use two full sets of the pictures so that the students also take a turn to tell what to mail.  This gives them the opportunity to practice the target vocabulary as well as combining two words/signs.  As always, I pair the utterances with ASL as needed to ensure success and comprehension. It's important to also use synonyms like large and little to further develop the students' vocabulary and to add to the listening challenge. 

 

Songs, Music, and Movement (song added 10/29)

 I try to get into our preschool classroom once a week to lead a group activity.  Most often we end our time together with songs.  Music and movement is a great way to integrate and teach theme-based vocabulary, both spoken and signed.  Singing songs without musical backup allows me to control the speed and emphasize key words.  All of the songs we sing are ones I have found throughout the years on the internet.  I did not write any of them.  I have, however, added sign language and occasionally some props.  For each song I have printed out the words and placed them on index cards.  I then print out a related picture and put it on the other side of the cards.  This allows me to lay out the choices and allow students the opportunity to select what they want to sing.  

Fall Songs:

"Apple Tree" (sung to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle)

Apple, apple, tree so tall,

I can hardly wait for fall.

When your apples I will pick,

Fill my basket, eat them quick.

Apple, apple, tree so tall,

I can hardly wait for fall.

"Leaves are Falling" (sung to the tune of Frere Jacques)

Leaves are falling, leaves are falling.

Falling down, on the ground.

Red and orange and yellow.

Red and orange and yellow.

Green and brown.

Green and brown.

10/29/24

"Fall is the Season" (tune of "Happy and You Know It")

It is fall and it's time to rake the leaves.

It is fall and it's time to rake the leaves.

It is fall, that's the season.

We don't need a better reason.

It is fall and it's time to rake the leaves.

(ride a bike, pick the apples, carve a pumpkin, jump in leaves, etc.)

I have different versions of this song for each of the seasons.  You simply change the one word in the lyrics and change the activities.  This song is great for adding movement for the students while highlighting vocabulary.  While I typically have approximately four activities in mind to sing about and act out, I will ask the students for ideas/suggestions as well.