Frank-N-Brains – Fun for Speech Therapy

Everyone, meet Frank-N-Brains. Frank-N-Brains, meet everyone. Now that we’re all friends, let me tell you how I used this game to elicit speech and language from preschoolers and 4th and 5th graders.

If you’ve been following over at AGB Speech Therapy you will have heard me mentioned how much I love October and all the Halloween activities you can do with speech therapy! And, now, I’ll say it again! October really is one of my favorite months to be an SLP!

Besides all the great vocabulary and figurative language you can use to make your sessions spooky, there are tons of fun reinforcement games you can use to keep your students’ brains motivated and engaged in lessons.

Here’s one of my most loved (as voted by the students) ideas:

Firstly, I put the bucket out on the table with the brains all stacked inside. I just left it there for a week and told the kids we’d play with it later on in the month. I asked the students what they thought we could do with the items and why Frank had so many brains. This gave them some time to think creatively and predict outcomes. Building some anticipation makes the activity more enjoyable when they do get to play and I also used it as a bargaining tool when some of my behavior kiddos weren’t making great choices
“Oh, you don’t want to complete the card game with Mrs. B? That’s too bad.                                                Only friends who finish their work get to play with Frank.”

Gotta love that “Love and Logic”

When it was time for Frank to come out and play, I let my articulation students earn brains for good speech sounds. When they had earned 3-4 we would take  a “brain break” and toss the squishy pink things (associate link for Amazon) into the bucket. I gave my preschoolers with language delays some tasks to earn brains too, but when they threw their brains they had to tell me where they landed. Some went in the bucket, others bounced out or rested under the chairs or next to the bookshelf. We talked about near and far, high and low, and lots of other basic concepts.

At the end of the month, Frank became very generous and each kiddo got a lollipop to take home.

We had so much fun with this activity last year, I cannot wait to do it again this Halloween week. I hope you’re enjoying October speech therapy as much as I am!

 

 

 

P.S. I do know that this particular character is, in fact, “Frankenstein’s Monster.” I explained this to my students, but they still voted to call him Frank. 🙂