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Big Pumpkin in speech therapy
Frequent Speech Sounds:

/p/ initial and medial
/w/ initial
/v/ initial
/dr/ “drat”
/ld/ final
/ch/ final

Themes:

Halloween
teamwork

Book Details:
Diverse Characters: N/A
Age Recommendation: Early Childhood, Elementary, Late Elementary

Big Pumpkin

By Erica Silverman

The witch has grown the biggest pumpkin ever, and now she wants to make herself a pumpkin pie for Halloween. But the pumpkin is so big she can’t get it off the vine.
It’s so big the ghost can’t move it, either. Neither can the vampire, nor the mummy. It looks as if there’ll be no pumpkin pie for Halloween until along comes the bat with an idea to save the day. How can the tiny bat succeed where bigger and strong spooky creatures have failed? You’ll be surprised!

This clever Halloween-themed book can be used to address social/emotional issues like teamwork. It is a cumulative tale making it great for sequencing! Discover more of the speech and language teaching concepts for using Big Pumpkin in speech therapy below:

Key Teaching Concepts

Narrative Structure:

complete episode
cumulative tale

Narrative Concepts:

repetitive text
problem solving
sequencing
predicting
compound sentence structure
conjunction (and)
verbs (regular past tense)
phonological awareness

Sequencing:

order of characters: witch, ghost, vampire, mummy, bat

Vocabulary:

sprout, vine, boasted

Character Analysis:

Each character boasted that they were bigger and stronger than the others.

Social/Emotional:

It is better to work as a team, than on your own.
What is the meaning of “rolled her eyes?”
How did the bat demonstrate courage?
What is the meaning of “hurray for the bat?”

Figurative Language:

onomatopoeias

Grammar:

compound sentence structure
conjunction (and)
verbs (regular past tense)

Text Features:

dialogue
ellipsis
exclamation points
italics

Phonological Awareness:

rhyming

Inferencing:

Why did they all laugh at the bat when he said he could help?
Why do they step aside when they think of the pumpkin pie?

Predicting:

Who will come along and be able to get the pumpkin loose?
How many characters will it take to get the pumpkin loose?

Problem Solving:

How did the witch finally get the pumpkin loose?

If you are interested in seeing other Halloween-themed books to use in therapy, then check out the Seasonal Narrative Teaching Points Book List for a printable copy.