GRAB A FEW READING IDEAS.....from Halloween pasts











How do you deal with Halloween in special education classroom? You might have 6 students or 7 or 8. Perhaps you have more with 12, 13 , 14? And with each one of those students often comes multiple  special needs; many of them have allergies, some are on special diets such as a gluten free diet, or sugar-free diet. What do you do for Halloween when you have so many different needs to meet?

I had multiple students on different diets, other students that had food allergies, yet we still wanted to have fun at Halloween in Ms Reeve's classroom. How can you have the typical party with all these special requests and needs?

This happened to me for several years so I partnered up with parents so that we could give the kids a great experience. First, I asked each parent to submit a short list of 5 things their child could and would eat. Items they were not allergic to, enjoy. It could be a Halloween treat or another item if they preferred. I ok'd all the other items with each parent for their child and from there I began to "build" my Halloween party.

 Once we had all the edible items straighten out, the rest was easy. First I set up the Halloween story area. Our school had strict rules about what we could do for Halloween so I had to adhere to those. A few of the books I used was How Big Could Your Pumpkin Grow by Wendell Minor




Another book I loved to use was
Pinkalicious by Victoria Kann
My all-time favorite book is, was and perhaps always will be:

 
It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
by Charles M. Schulz


All three of these books and many more lend themselves to quick, fun reading in a group and then you can use them for comprehension activities or acting out activities...perfect for a party.
The next activity was taking the story we read and putting it into sequencing order with pre-drawn pictures. The kids loved coloring and putting the pictures together on the back of an orange paper plate. 
On the front of the plate we made a pumpkin/jack o' lantern face. 

For eating, most of the time, we were able to work it out so everyone had their own item to eat and a choice of one other item.  The kids loved all the activities so much. All the activities were spaced out around the classroom at different center tables. 







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