What to Teach in October in the Elementary Special Education Classroom

I love October!! It is my favorite month. Fall is here 🍂, decorations are up🎃, and it's my birthday month 🎂! 

Halloween Theme

October is also a fun time in the classroom. We focus on lots of fun Halloween activities each year including learning new vocabulary, playing Halloween games, and sorting and graphing Halloween candy. 

These along with 9 additional Halloween-themed activities are included in my Halloween Thematic Unit in my TPT store! 

Trick or Treat Practice

Throughout the month of October, my class practices trick or treating in our weekly social skills group:

• Week 1: We start with introducing AAC for saying "trick or treat" and "thank you" within the classroom
• Week 2: Then, each staff member (myself, my paras, and our SLP) each set up a station for students to rotate through and practice while we pass out candy.
• Week 3: Next, we practice trick or treating within the office with all the office staff
• Week 4: We are ready to trick or treat with our families! 

And we connect it to this fill-in the blank writing activity.

Pumpkin Carving

One of my favorite annual traditions is hands down carving pumpkins with my class! We have made some super cute jack-o-lanterns over the years!

We also use pumpkin carving as a great opportunity to do some sensory exploration and discuss the texture and feel of the insides (affectionately referred to as the "pumpkin guts"!).

And it is also a great opportunity to work on sequencing!

Check out my previous post for my Top 5 Tips for Carving a Pumpkin in the Special Education Classroom for more details on what this looks like in my classroom. 

Halloween Picture Books

My favorite books for Halloween are Big Pumpkin and The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. 

One year on our hayride at the farm they did a "spooky storytime" and did the Little Old Lady with props. It was SO MUCH FUN! And was a great way to get the kids engaged. After that year, we always acted out the story with spare clothes in the classroom. It was so fun!

Find the activities above in my Picture Book Communication and Comprehension Supports in my TPT store. Click the images below to get them! 

Halloween Crafts

Some fun Halloween crafts we have done was a group pumpkin pinata project for our Halloween Party and some footprint ghosts! Having classmates paint each others feet led to LOTS of giggles!

What a busy month! I love how my little class can mix in so much fun with our learning. 

Halloween Bundles in my TPT store 

The units above are available individually or in a variety of bundles! Click the images to find them in my TPT store!

Teaching About Feelings in the Special Education Classroom

After all the talk about what students love during Valentine's Day activities, I always found a natural next step in my thematic units was to focus on feelings and emotions. 

Check out some of my favorite Emotions activities:

ELA Ideas

• I first introduce feelings vocabulary. We use a variety of visuals including photos, icons, and even emojis. 

• Next, we practice sorting emotions based on the vocabulary we've learned. These cut and paste worksheets are also included in my Feelings Thematic Unit. 

• Then, we read stories to discuss each emotion in context. I love The Way I Feel by Janan Cain because it covers so many robust feeling words. I use the communication board from my Feelings Thematic Unit for students to participate.

• Another favorite feelings story is When Sophie Gets Angry-- Really, Really Angry by Molly Bang. I love this story for introducing the concept of coping strategies to my students. 

I love this story so much that I created an entire Picture Book Communication and Comprehension Supports resource which you can check out in my TPT store. It includes vocabulary, sentence building boards, AAC, comprehension questions, sequencing, and fill-in-the blank activities. Plus IEP goal ideas and progress monitoring sheets!

 

Social Group Ideas

• We practice our feelings vocabulary words by playing a game of charades where each student makes a silly emoji face and sees if their friends can guess them 😜😉😁😋🤨😱

😡😡😡

☹️☹️☹️

😁😁😁

• We also practice our vocabulary with a variety of games including BINGO and this great board game board. 

I use this universal game board from my Feeling Thematic Unit to practice a variety of skills depending on the needs of my students including: number, letter, or sound ID, reading sight words, answering math facts, or practicing other IEP goal skills in addition to our emotions vocabulary!

 

• We also follow up our unit on When Sophie Gets Angry by talking about our own emotions, what causes them, and coping strategies for what we call BIG emotions. I created a book template for my students to use as a resource when they are having big feelings. It aligns loosely with The Zones of Regulation. This template is included as one of the 12 cross-curricular activities in my Feelings Thematic Unit.

• This is also a good time to introduce our classroom Big Feelings Tools. I use the A Little Peaceful Spot book from the A Little Spot of Emotion by Diane Alber. After reading the story, I use a slide deck to introduce our Big Feeling Tools and model each tool and we discuss the expectations. 

Our big feelings tools for moving our bodies include a Color Match Station which is a velcro board poster where students get vestibular input from bending down to get an Ellison cutout and then match it to the poster and a Heavy Work Station in which students match covered textbooks to corresponding colored Xs in the hallway.

Our big feelings tools for resting our bodies include a Picture Reading Poster from S'cool Moves, a Calming Kit with small fidgets, and my Special Interest Deep Breathing Posters.

Math Ideas

• With so many different emotion icons, it can be a great opportunity to practice graphing. I have done this in a variety of ways. When we have more time, I have students sort and graph emoji erasers like these from Amazon:

 

One year, my OT pushed in for a group and we actually had students make a collage with emoji stickers and then count and graph each emoji they used. These stickers were another great Amazon find. 

For both the erasers and stickers, Amazon has a TON of options so you can certainly choose what variety works best for your students. 

Admittedly, there have been years where I have needed to simplify the assignment so I pre-made a worksheet with various emotions for students to create. Of course you can find this in my Feelings Thematic Unit 😉!

• These erasers and stickers are also a great way to practice basic counting for students who aren't quite ready for graphing yet. I also made a fun emoji counting worksheet.

Cooking Ideas

• During our cooking time, my students loved making cooking activities with different faces such as waffles, rice cakes, or english muffin pizzas. 

Interested in these activities and more? Why not bundle and save! 

What is your favorite activity to teach feelings in your classroom? Which of these activities are you excited to try?