This is Halloween, this is Halloween.....

In the spirit of the season, I wanted to share what's been going on in my speech room this week.

Kindergarten approved. Two of my favorites.

As a big fan of animated literacy, I like to use books that have movements. I use my puppets to do the movements as I read and have the kids copy with their own hands. It gets them more involved in the story and helps with the wiggles.

The older kids played Pirate Talk rather than a book activity since it was time for school pictures. I was afraid that my schedule would be completely messed up, but most of the kids were done by the time I got them. The kindergartners, unfortunately, were the only ones subject to the disruption. It always happens to be the ones that cannot handle changes that get the interruptions. Thankfully, they worked on an ultra cute craft project that could finished up later (made Eddy Elephant using torn strips of paper. We've been doing one for each letterland character.)

This is the game that I have waited for nearly a year to introduce. I found this spider web tablecloth after Halloween last year at Salvation Army. It was only two dollars and I knew that I had to have it. The bean-bag pumpkin booties showed up at Goodwill 3 weeks ago for $1.99 and it was a perfect match. 

The strategy behind the game is to place picture cards in random spots of the web. The kids throw the bean-bags and try to hit a card. If they hit a card (or near it), then they have to tell me what it is and we apply it to their goals (articulation, language, blending/segmenting, etc). We happened to use Letterland cards in the EC room.

If they hit one of my two giant spiders, they get visited by.....

My friend Spooky Spider. He's another puppet that is worn more like a glove so he can wiggle his legs at them. I had the kindergartners begging for some spider time with this game. I like to vary his "attack" with by sometimes saying "Watch out!"; "Oh, no! It's a giant spider"; and doing the music from Jaws that warned you of the shark. 

Of course, I happened to make a fool out of myself by doing this when the Principle and Vice Principle got pulled into the room to observe a behavioral issue. Life's never dull in the EC classroom. 

***You can do something similar by finding a table cloth at Walmart or buying a plain one and making the lines yourself. The bean-bags can also be homemade using orange fabric and the spiders came from the dollar store.