4 Easy Crafts for November

Planning for mixed groups or those difficult to engage groups can be a challenge. I have found that using small, simple crafts is a way to keep hands busy and working! Because they are not complicated, we can focus many speech and language skills at the same time, plus an extra does of fine motor work. I also like that you can easily pair these with a book as your follow up activity!

Here are some ways to incorporate goals:

• Have students ‘earn' the pieces to the craft by practicing their target skill
• Articulation students can practice a word each time they rip or glue
• Target requesting by having student ask for what they need
• Descriptive vocabulary, like size, shapes, colors, are perfect for working on during craft activities
• Brainstorm vocabulary related to the season/holiday, story parts, articulation words, or specific grammar concepts and write on the craft itself
• Use it as a listening comprehension task by not giving an visual example and have students follow your directions. Then show them your completed example and compare how they look

Corn is a theme many people use in November so I thought I would start with this one! It's an easy one to prep, you just need an oval (I used white), one strip of green paper, and some yellow paper for tearing. I put it on a blue background, but you don't even need to do that! I think this craft would pair well with themes for scarecrows, fall harvest, or foods.

I've actually shared this craft before on the blog a LONG time ago, but it's another easy one for November if you are going to be talking about Veterans Day in your classroom. All you need is camo colors like greens, browns, and gray, plus one sheet for students to glue the pieces to. Then they just rip and glue! In this example, I brainstormed words related to the holiday with a student working on /r/ and wrote them on the pieces.

This acorn has a good story…I originally intended for this to be a handprint craft…but acorns look funny with legs 🙂 So for the next try, I kept my fingers all together and traced around them and it created a perfect long acorn (Also, fun fact, I used the same shape for the corn!). Then I cut some circles and halved them for the ‘hats'. Students can give them a face and detail to the hat if they want…and since the paper is on the longer side, there is plenty of room to write or draw on the back if you want to! This would be perfect with the book “The Little Acorn” or “The Golden Acorn“

And of course we need a turkey craft!! This one is basic shapes, one brown circle and a lot of long strips of paper that I cut in half. I placed the strips on the background page, then glued the circle on top so that the ‘feather' would be loose. I actually used a regular sized paper as a background page, then folded in half so that it would create a tent and the turkey would stand up! You can pair this with any turkey story, my favorite is Turkey Trouble!

Crafts really are a fun way to work on speech and language skills… without any complicated steps or taking away from the purpose. I hope this gives you some easy ideas for therapy this month!