The Halloween decorations have been up in the stores for over two weeks now so I figured it was a good time to get prepared for the October month.  I wanted to share another set of adapted books I created for my students for this time of the year.  The series includes “Scarecrow, Scarecrow What Do You See?, “What’s Scaring You?”, and “Where is the Jack-O-Lantern?”.  These will be some fun books to use with your students during the month of October as we start the Fall Season and the students are looking forward to celebrating Halloween.

“Scarecrow, Scarecrow What Do You See?” targets both number concepts and Fall vocabulary terms.  For this book the students have to select the correct number of Fall items on the page and find the correct picture to match.  On each page I have the students touch the Fall items as they count each item on the page to help with that one-to-one correspondence.  For some of my students I given them a choice of 2 numbers to pick from if scanning all the numbers is too difficult or they are still working on number identification.  Keep modeling those Fall vocabulary terms while reading the book.

While reading the book I ask my students lots of “wh” questions about the Fall items on each page as we read the book.  For example on the apple tree page I might ask “what color are the apples?”, “where do the apples grow?”, or “what can you make with apples?” depending on the students language skills.  For the turkey page I might ask “What does the turkey say?” or “Where do the turkeys live?”.

“What’s Scaring You?” focuses on various Halloween vocabulary terms and the prepositional concept “on”.  This book is pretty simple and repetitive so my students like to help me read the book.  As I read “what’s scaring you” across the top of the page I point to one of my students on the “you” part which they think is so funny.  Then we softly shout “BOO” as we pretend to scare each other in the group.  After we finish the phrase telling where the ghost is, one student takes one of the ghosts and puts it on the correct item in the book.  I then model where the ghost is.  For example, “a ghost on the black cat”.   I like to model the longer phrases for my students but for some students you can reduce the length to a short 2-word utterances such as “on cat” to describe the same picture.  This book also gives the students lots of practice using the preposition “on” or touching “on” icon on a core board or AAC system.

“Where is the Jack-O-Lantern?” targets the prepositional concepts “above, below, next to, and on”.  In the book I place a hard piece of Velcro above, below, next to, and on each Halloween item on every page so the student has to understand the prepositional concept and not just match the Jack-O-Lantern to the only piece of Velcro on the page.

I used different Jack-O-Lanterns on every page because I wanted to make it a little more challenging for my students.  I wanted to the students to have to find the matching Jack-O-Lantern for each page.  I also like using this book with student who have AAC devices or use core boards because it targets those prepositional phrases and the students need to locate the correct prepositional concepts on the device.

As you are preparing for Halloween check out these Halloween books.  I will be making some FREE book pictures and questions to go with these books in the upcoming weeks!