I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS).  In December my church makes a special effort to focus on our Savior.   Last year the LDS church offered a "Light the World: in 25 ways over 25 days" challenge. My family had fun trying to think of our Savior each day of the month leading up to Christmas.  We are excited to begin again this weekend.

Because winter holidays are generally a pretty big deal they are also a great way to work on functional applicable language skills.  I have created a calendar for the #LightTheWorld 2017 event based off the one found on lds.org (HERE) that includes ideas of how to apply each scriptural principle to your day.  Read through it, you will be amazed at how many activities are based on being able to communicate and use language (spoken, written, and social).  

As you begin traditions in your own home this year take advantage of modeling good language skills.  Provide examples of more complete sentences, explain how, why, where, when things are done.  Explore tastes, smells, how things feel and sound.  There is a whole world out there to share with your child this holiday season!

You can download the file here if you are interested:

We all know I LOVE using the holidays as a jumping off point for speech and language activities.  They are motivating, use language that is high frequency for that time of year, and they are just plain fun.  This activity is super awesome!!

This year I have been doing a TON of activities using prepositional phrases with kids.  I think I stumbled on THE BEST Halloween activity ever.  So I thought I would share.   
The book "175 Easy-to-Do Halloween Crafts" has this awesome craft idea:


Basically you take a 12x12 piece of scrapbook paper, fold it into 16 squares, cut the edges and then fold a house...it is SUPER easy once you have given it a try.  Then you get to let the kids decorate it however they like.  In my world that means I get little clip-art guys (I love the ones found HERE) and have the kids tell me where they belong on the house using prepositional phrases.

For example:
The skeleton goes inside the house, Frankenstein lives on top of the roof, the pumpkin sits beside the door, the witch is flying over the house, etc.  

You can work receptive and expressive skills (following directions, giving directions), you can work sequencing, you can work pronouns, you can work verbs...so many options!  Or you can throw the goals out the window and just decorate and have fun knowing you are providing a language rich experience.  No matter where your child's language skills are they will LOVE this activity.  Give it a try!

Have I mentioned how awesome holidays are to encourage speech and language?  Here are some ideas to get the most mileage out of Halloween in the next few weeks.

A bunch of these ideas capitalize on activities you will be doing anyway...why not add a concentrated effort to boost speech and language along the way?

Toddlers:  
Point out decorations and label them - "I see a bat!"  "I see a black cat!"  "Look, that witch is flying!".  Easy first words to practice at this time:  Boo! hay, bat, cat, light, whoo (as in owl sound), eyes, nose, mouth, apple, etc.  Narrate what you see on walks, while shopping, reading books, or at parties.  It never gets old when you're two :)

Also most of the following ideas apply to toddlers as well, but keep in mind that toddlers are very young, they learn through play...keep things fun!

Pre-School/School Age:
Practice the trick-or-treat routine, have the child review with you (great for sequencing).  Talk about Halloween night safety and practice making predictions/asking wh questions (ie.  What would you do if a house doesn't have it's lights on?  Why do we wait until Mom checks our candy before we eat it?)  Also practice having your child say thank-you after getting a piece of candy!  That is an important social piece of the routine.

If speech is a concerns really hammer the sounds in "trick - or - treat" because they can be quite tricky.  Other good phrases for speech (particularly k/g sounds): piece of candy corn, decorate the cookie, put a candle in the pumpkin, look at the black cat,  Practice saying the name of whatever costume your child will dress-up as, because you know they are going to be asked!

Do some Halloween baking!  Follow a recipe to work on sequencing, quantities, and problem solving.  Discuss what works and what you might change next time.  Talk about textures, tastes, smells, and how something looks.  Baking is SO GOOD for language development.  You could even take pictures of the various steps and then have the child use them to tell a friend about their fun activity (phones make this super easy).

Compare/Contrast different Halloween icons, how are a pumpkin and an apple alike, how are they different?  How are a bat and a witch alike?  How are they different?

Explore at the pumpkin patch, on a hike, at the park, on a walk in your neighborhood.  There is so much to see, hear, smell, touch, etc. at this time of year.  Bombard your child with descriptive language!  "Look, that pumpkin is so smooth, but it's stem is super prickly!"  "Let's see how many different colors of leaves we can pick up before we get home."  "I don't know why leaves get crunchy when the fall off the tree, let's go home and look it up."  
Think of some "Would you rather?" questions to play with:  "Would you rather eat a caramel apple or bob for apples?  Would you rather carve a pumpkin or paint a pumpkin?"

This post is all about helping kids generalize their language skills using something that all kids love...holidays!  Talking about upcoming holidays is a great way to help kids solidify their newfound language skills because:
1. Holidays are super motivating for kids, they are fun!
2. Holidays are very high frequency topics in the weeks proceeding each major holiday.
3. Holiday conversations often are repetitive and predictive...talking about Halloween, well then expect to be asked what you will dress up as, talking about Christmas, expect to be asked what you have asked Santa for, etc.


So I take full advantage of the holidays when they roll around.  Having a private practice helps because then I don't have to worry about crossing some blurry school vs. church topic line.  I ask parents beforehand and go with what they generally talk about.  I LOVE working directly with parents.
These are some of the big goals that I work on in our conversations:
 topic maintenance if we are talking about Halloween let's stay there for a few minutes and not jump around to Star Wars or Cars II.
 conversational turns are we both sharing the talking time, is my client giving answers and asking questions, etc.
 ability to answer wh-questions and ask wh-questions this is a big one, in therapy it is easy to work on  answering wh-questions but harder to find spontaneous opportunities to ask them.  The basically scripted holiday conversation routines everyone uses are great for that.
eye-contact is the student engaging in appropriate eye-contact, especially when requesting information?
and other conversation level grammar and speech sound goals (using correct pronouns, correct helper verbs or conjunctions, verb tenses, /k/ sounds, etc.)


and the best part...these are conversations that have a huge likelihood of being taken outside of the therapy session time so the students can practice and apply the skills we have been working on to help them interact with peers.