Spooky season is finally here! And with it comes all the fun Halloween things like planning a costume, decorating your home, buying candy, and for us SLPs – planning Halloween themed therapy sessions!
For two weeks I did a fall theme focusing on things like leaves, pumpkins, scarecrows, etc. You can read my recommendations for fall books and fall crafts (with a freebie!) that are great for therapy.
But now I’m working on my two week Halloween theme and am loving it! I have Dollar Tree decorations hanging up everywhere and my kids are so excited! I love to incorporate a variety of activities, but books never let me down! There is always SO much you can do with them! It’s great for mixed groups when you need to target a lot of different goals, but it’s also great when you can find 1 book that will last you all day for most of your sessions!
I searched Amazon for popular Halloween books, read them, and now here’s my recommendation!
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1. Room on the Broom
Of course – probably the most famous Halloween children’s story! And for good reason! It’s repetitive, rhymes, and has a cute storyline!
There are also SO many companion activities for this book on Teachers Pay Teachers!
2. Ten Timid Ghosts
This book has everything! Repetition, rhyming, and detailed illustrations to elicit lots of language! It even has a prediction/inference component with there being 1 clever ghost that isn’t tricked by the witch. If you look in the pages leading up to it, then you can see how!
Oh and did I mention it has math in it? Yay for literacy and subtraction!
3. How to Catch a Monster
This book is so FUN! I love the rhymes – and they create a funny storyline!
It’s so silly that kids love it! It would be a great book to target story retell since it has more of a plot than other books. Of course, WH- questions, vocabulary, and descriptive language skills would also all be easy to target with this book!
4. Halloween Night
This is a twist of the classic “T’was the Night Before Christmas” poem and it is full of fantastic vocabulary and beautiful illustrations to elicit language! There are a lot of conversation topics that could occur from this book. I personally think it would be a good one for all ages!
5. Halloween Preposition Interactive Book
Are you looking for something more interactive with built-in targeted practice? I was! That’s why I created this story as Boom cards!
It’s a fairly simple story about a witch named Wendy and the characters she visits on Halloween night. It’s designed to teach and immediately practice prepositions / spatial concepts, but you could target pronouns/verbs/etc. as well!
Honorable Mentions
The Little Old Lady Who Wasn’t Afraid of Anything – This book is very repetitive and has lots of fun onomatopoeia! It would be great for targeting verbs and have the kids act out what all of the clothing items do.
There you have it! 5 Halloween books that you can get on Amazon, look up read alouds on YouTube, or search your personal kids books – you may already own a couple!
Your clients are going to love these Halloween books and all of the Halloween themed therapy sessions leading up to the big day! Happy spooky season!
xxx *hugs*
Emily
