Making Therapy Relevant

We had a Halloween speech therapy idea for sequencing that we used to trick a young girl into learning about sequencing. It was a treat for all involved.

Here is a Halloween activity that can help a child with a language sequencing problem.

We treat a spirited girl, we will call her Jackie for this post, once a week. Jackie is working on sequencing, putting information in the correct order. Several weeks ago with Halloween fast approaching our speech pathologist, Sandi Spuhler MS CCC-SLP, decided to use the occasion of Halloween to create an activity to teach Jackie sequencing. The activity worked wonderfully.

Sandi outlined the steps that Jackie would follow to achieve success.

  • Step One: Decide on what type of Halloween contest we should run to get all Kidmunicate kids excited to participate.
    • They chose a guess the number of candies in a plastic Jack-O-Lantern jar.
  • Step Two: Create the rules and entry forms.
    • Sandi and Jackie created the rules together.
    • As you can see they practiced sequencing and focused on key sequencing words like first, next, then and last.

Kidmunicate Treating Sequencing Issues

  • Step Three: Set up the contest table.
    • Sandi and Jackie set up the table in the waiting room.
    • Sandi counted the candy alone so that Jackie could participate.

Kidmunicate Teaching Sequencing

  • Step Four: Collect all the entries.
    • They had to wait patiently for the entry bucket to fill up.
    • Together they checked the entry bucket before each therapy session.
    • Sandi made Jackie understand that they could not count the entries until the contest ended. (Sandi emphasized the beginning (the set up), middle (the contest) and the end (finding the winner).
    • Sandi also reminded Jackie that she could not eat the candy. That was the hardest part.
  • Step Five: Count the number of candies.
    • Together, Sandi and Jackie counted all of the pieces of candy in the jar.
  • Step Six: Find the winner.
    •  Next, they looked for the entry that was closest to the final tally.

Guess who won?

Jackie missed by 2 and won the $20 Toys R Us gift certificate. Actually there was a tie, so we had two winners and gave out two prizes.

The Kidmunication Point

If you are extending therapy into the home or you are an SLP looking for a speech therapy idea for sequencing this one worked well because it was engaging and relevant. Context and relevance are keys to success.