Try This Easy Listening and Spoken Language Snack Activity For Autumn

Cooking provides authentic opportunities for children to listen, follow directions, and develop self-help skills. An enormous amount of learning takes place during daily routines of preparing food, cooking, and cleaning up.

An irresistible Autumn snack of candy corn and peanuts is the perfect combination of salty and sweet. It’s so simple to make with kids on your caseload or at home!

FIRST - Confirm no one has peanut allergies!

You’ll need a bag of candy corn and a can of salted peanuts.
In a medium bowl add the peanuts and the candy corn and mix. Ta-Dah!

FREE DOWNLOAD

This handout contains targets and ideas for involving children in food preparation, cooking, washing dishes, and cleaning up. It is designed for families and therapists/teachers guiding and coaching caregivers.

TARGET IDEAS FOR:

LITTLE LISTENERS - Listen and learn while pouring, mixing, tasting, and eating this snack.

PRESCHOOLERS - Talk about opposites.
Peanuts & Candy Corn are salty - sweet | crunchy - chewy | brown - colorful | bag - can.

SCHOOL AGE - Brainstorm compare & contrast.
Peanuts and candy corn are BOTH snacks.
Peanuts come in a can WHILE Candy Corn is sold in a plastic bag.
Keep it going!…

Active Kids Listening and Following Fall Directions Game

Who doesn’t know active kids who need practice listening and following one-step, multi-step, sequential, temporal, conditional, and complex directions? The game targets action verbs and conjunctions to grow listening and spoken language skills. The secret is the kids are expanding receptive language skills, increasing their auditory memory and processing skills while being engaged and active.

HAVE FUN WHILE TARGETING:

✧ Action verbs - Pick, scurry, jump, drop, fly, pop, swoop, shake, fall, stretch, roll, scavenge, waddle, hang

✧ Conjunctions- and, or, before, after, either, while

✧ One, Two, and Multi-Step Directions - Following basic directions start with simple, one-two steps including an action verb and a noun. Multi-step directions involve following two or more directions at a time.

✧ Sequential Directions - Sequential directions involve following directions in a specific order. "Hang like a scarecrow, pick an apple, and jump in the pile of leaves."

✧ Temporal Directions - These target a child’s ability to follow directions containing the words “before” or “after” in a variety of positions within the utterance. For example, in some instances, the term “before” is located in the middle of the direction: “Pick an apple before you shake like a tree.” The listening direction may be positioned at the beginning such as, “Before you fly like an owl, stretch like a cat.”

✧ Conditional directions - Listeners decide what actions to do based on the given condition(s). “If your a bat, jump into a leaf pile.” If not, then waddle like a turkey.”

✧ Complex Directions - These increase auditory memory and processing demands when critical elements are included such as adjectives, quantities, sizes, and more. "Fly like the SLEEPY, OLD owl." "Waddle like the scared THANKSGIVING turkey."

You’ll love this no-planning activity that requires easy one-time Prep. Just print out the activity cards and cut them on the dotted lines. Done!

• It's fast, fun, effective, and can be played over and over again.

• Terrific for children of different ages and stages that can be leveled up or down to meet their needs.

• It's great for children who are deaf and hard of hearing and those who can benefit from practicing listening skills.

This activity is ideal for …

Face to face in therapy, school, and at home

Teletherapy and Virtual learning Play across a screen in teletherapy

Auditory Working Memory and The 3 T’s: Thankful, Turkey, Teletherapy

I’m THANKFUL for this low-prep yet rich listening and following directions activity for teletherapy. Here are step-by-step instructions to make the best hand turkeys that can be leveled up or down for kiddos of all ages in your caseload. 

Ask the parents to have available a sheet of white computer paper and crayons (i.e., brown, red, purple, orange, green). I begin by modeling tracing my hand on my whiteboard so the child can all see well over the computer screen. I talk about how I firmly place one hand, palm down and fingers spread apart, on the sheet of white computer paper. Starting on one side of my wrist, I trace with the black crayon around my hand until I reach the other side of my wrist.

Next, I give this simple direction: "Trace your hand like you saw me do with your black crayon." This is always the first step. I ask the child to show me their paper up once finished. A parent or caregiver can help ensure the child is on the right track and has a general outline or turkey shape.

At this point in the activity, the directions depend on the listening and language level of the child. They can be one-step, one-step with descriptors, two-step, and more complex directions and descriptions. One-step directions are easy to think of but here are ideas for more complex instructions.

1. Using the black pencil or crayon, draw a line from the start point to the endpoint to finish the body of the turkey.

2. Draw another line from the bottom of each finger to the next to create the feathers.

3. Color a small black circle near the end of the thumb to make the turkey’s eye.

4. Below the eye, on the outside of the thumb, draw two ovals that make the gobbler.

5. On the tip of the thumb, draw one triangle for the beak.

6. In the middle of the turkey, draw the wing.

7. Draw two straight lines at the bottom of the turkey to make legs.

8. At the end of each line, draw three more little lines for the toes.

9. Using the brown, red, purple, orange, green crayons, color each of the fingers a different color.

10. Color the rest of the body of the turkey brown.

11. Using the orange crayon, color the beak.

12. Color the gobble red.

You may want to have the listener add grass under the turkey, a tree behind the turkey, a sun in the sky, falling leaves, or a pilgrim hat on the turkey.

We then show each other our turkeys. I draw my turkey off-screen before the session. We compare and contrast our hand turkeys fostering thinking and conversational skills. To extend the activity, let the child take a turn being the teacher and give directions to a parent, sibling, or friend.

Sing With Me Thanksgiving Listen | Sing | Play

Sing With Me - Thanksgiving includes 10 language-rich songs for children with and without hearing loss. Music and singing are fabulous tools for coaching parents and caregivers while helping lay the foundation for listening and spoken language.

Music and singing is a fabulous tool for coaching parents and caregivers while helping lay the foundation for listening and spoken language. Parents and caregivers are encouraged to sing, sing and sing some more even if they can't carry a tune. For some, this comes naturally. For others, including music and singing in daily routines and activities is challenging.

Make music part of each day. Children love hearing the sound of their loved ones voices and the time spent together. Be playful, silly, and have fun together! Sing traditional songs, nursery and action rhymes like “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and “The Wheels on the Bus”. Make up songs like "Good Morning To You" to a familiar tune like the (Happy Birthday). Sing popular songs, seasonal songs, Sunday school songs and songs from the family's heart language.

These Thanksgiving songs expose children to new words and concepts that build language and the foundation for learning to read. Songs and music provide opportunities for children to improve auditory skills, memory for words and builds vocabulary. Music helps children perceive speech sounds accurately and develop clear speech with natural melody and inflection.

What's Included?

10 Thanksgiving Songs For Children

• 8.5 x 5.5-inch songs sheets for printing

• Full-size versions of the song sheets for use in teletherapy or in-person sharing.

• Printable finger puppets and props

• Listening and Spoken Language (LSL) tips to encourage auditory learning.