This is a re-publish of a popular blog post from last year, and these books are still my favorites. Check them out and I hope you can use them at home or in your speech room, too!
My young clients are starting to get excited about October! I’m finding that activities with leaves, fall colors, and pumpkins are a hit come October.
I use books with my clients working on building language and speech sounds. It is exciting to use these books to help my clients better understand what happens in the Fall.
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Why I’m Using Books This October With My Preschoolers
I use books to target a variety of skills, including:
– sequencing
– building vocabulary
– speaking in phrases and sentences
– saying clear speech sounds
This month, here are three books I’m enjoying using in my speech therapy sessions.
1. It’s Pumpkin Day, Mouse! By Laura Numeroff
It’s Pumpkin Day, Mouse! is a great book for building vocabulary and sentence structure. In this book, mouse paints a variety of pumpkins with different emotions. For example, there are sad, happy, and friendly pumpkins. For this activity, I create visual sentence frames. These sentence frames are picture prompts for creating phrases and sentences. For this book, I have sentence frames that say “The pumpkin is ____” with pictures for each word. This way, my students get experience building vocabulary.
I use these pumpkins with varied emotions as a coloring activity as well. In this activity, students color pumpkins and create different faces on each one. This has been a fun activity to practice using emotional vocabulary words in phrases. Most of my students can name some feelings (happy, sad). However, many of my students need practice with other emotion words (silly, friendly).
2. EEK! Halloween! By Sandra Boynton
In EEK! Halloween!, the chickens at the farm are afraid of everything they see around Halloween. Why is the elephant dressed as a mouse? Why is there a robot walking around? By the end of the story, the animals realize it’s just Halloween. This author uses rhyme in this book to keep the story going with a fun pace my preschoolers enjoy.
This is a great book for asking “what” questions with children. Also, I use this book to help my clients name objects and speak in phrases.
3. The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything By Linda D. Williams
The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything has more words than the two other books I mentioned. This book can be a little too long for some of my youngest clients. However, I’ve used this book for several years in a row and I still enjoy it as much as my clients do.
This book features an old lady who walks through the woods. A glove follows her. Pants follow her. Each object has its own noise, which my clients love. By the end, the little old lady makes a scarecrow out of the objects that followed her. This story ends well for all involved.
I also use printed objects (gloves, pants) which I have enlarged and laminated. I bring out the objects while we are reading the book. This keeps my younger clients engaged.
A Summary of My Favorite October Books
I enjoy this time of year as an opportunity to read new books with my clients. Since I use books so often in speech therapy, I love having opportunities to read new books with clients. Sometimes, I can get bored reading the same old books. I think my clients feel the same way!
Whenever I’m looking for a new book, I consider the age of the client I’m working with. With toddlers and preschoolers, I especially enjoy sturdy board books. In addition, I look for books with simple sentence structure and new vocabulary words.
If you have a favorite book for October, feel free to send it my way! I’m always looking for new opportunities to expand my own collection.
I hope you find these book suggestions helpful in your search for new books, as well. Many of my clients love talking about October, and I’m enjoying joining in on the fun!