Fall is a wonderful time of year for listening!! Crunchy leaves, crackling campfires, football cheers and don’t forget the sound of the fryer beep for those delicious warm cider donuts! Fall boasts countless opportunities to facilitate the listening, speech and language skills of a child with hearing loss. Below are a few of my favorites. Try some at home with your little one!
By: Kristin Vincent, M.S., CCC-SLP
Fall Themed books! Check your local library for a copy!
- Fresh Fall Leaves by Becky Franco – Take advantage of the countless verbs! Rake up a pile of leaves in your own backyard and pick, scoop, and throw your way through this book!
- Happy Halloween Biscuit by Alyssa Satin Capucilli – Check out this book for wonderful opportunities to target Where questions as you look for a curious puppy (and his pet spider) on each page!
- There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves by Lucille Colandro – There are numerous opportunities to listen to rhythmic patterns while targeting sequencing, auditory memory skills, and prediction skills in this great book! A few visual prompts and ideas for building your own edible scarecrow are pictured here.
Take a Fall Walk Outside – Listen for crunching leaves and scampering squirrels!
- Leaf collection – Fill a bag with leaves. Bring them home to discuss the colors, shapes, and textures of each leaf. Take is a step further and create a chart illustrating the similarities and differences of each kind.
- Create leaf animals- Target vocabulary words, sequencing concepts and spatial concepts as you create animals out of the leaves you collected. Kids will love these!
Eat and Create with Apples
- Lay out the pieces of an apple (stem, seeds, flesh, core, skin) and your child can identify each word through listening. Discuss the purpose of each part and the life cycle of an apple. Use a halved apple to create apple stamps with paint.
- Chop, Slice, Peel, and taste your way through delicious apple desserts. Listen for the sounds of each step of the recipe – What does the knife on a wooden cutting board sound like? What about the whir of a mixer or the sizzle of caramel sauce over a hot stove? Through listening, your child can decipher between similar words such as cut and cup or dice and slice. Not to mention, recipes provide wonderful opportunities to target quantity concepts and for teaching your child to advocate for missed information!
