Go Away Big Green Monster: Best-Ever Books For Halloween Speech Therapy

There are monsters in my speech therapy room.

I'm ready for Halloween in my speech therapy room, with bats and ghosts and pumpkins galore. But this week, the monsters moved in.

Monsters have been here before, helping us to learn prepositions, concepts and telling us stories. But this time the monster was big and green and had sharp teeth. He came in when we read a favorite storybook of mine, Go Away Big Green Monster by Ed Emberly.

Go Away, Big Green Monster is great for Halloween speech therapy.

I read Go Away, Big Green Monster to my preschool and kindergarten students every year.  I try to read it at Halloween because of the fun monster theme, but it's a great story for any time of year. It does not mention Halloween, so it could be appropriate for those settings where Halloween activities are not encouraged.

The monster theme helps children face their fears. 

When you use not-too-scary monsters it's really fun. Every child has had fears, and monsters are a way for children to express and their fears and face them. With this book, they can even make them disappear!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The story begins by telling us the Big Green Monster has two big yellow eyes.

Spooky right? As you turn the pages, more parts appear. 

The pages are die-cut, and you can see the layers below, giving the monster a feeling of depth. The simple, bold illustrations are colorful and eye-catching. This story features repetitive text, which is perfect to encourage the children to participate in "reading" with me and re-telling the story.

This is a great story for working on body parts and adjectives.

The monster adds eyes, mouth, teeth, nose, ears, face and hair as you turn the pages. He looks scarier as you go. The body parts have wonderful descriptions, creating an opportunity to work on adjectives: big, long, sharp, squiggly, scraggly.


These monster puppets are perfect for following up the story later. I have my children request the body parts to make their puppets.

I snagged this set at a garage sale, and have not been able to find another. However, if you are interested in a build-a-monster puppet set, Melissa and Doug have one, available on several sites. (I do not receive any compensation for providing this link, and have no relationship with Melissa and Doug. I simply want to point out that similar sets are available.)

You can see it HERE.

Use the "I'm wondering" strategy

Make comments and ask questions as you read.  Use the "I'm wondering" strategy to make a comment, and children will be anxious to participate and enlighten you. "Oooh, I'm wondering how those teeth feel. Sharp?  I think you're right. What else can we think of that's sharp? What do you think scraggly means?"

We also talk about feelings when we read this book. Is the green face scary? What else is scary? Are spiders scary? Are bunny rabbits scary?

Practice expanding sentences and articulation of velar /g/ with the repetitive text.

After the monster has fully appeared, children can practice telling him to "go away" on each page. It gives them a wonderful feeling of control and empowerment to tell that monster to leave, they love this part!

The phrase "Go away...." repeats, offering multiple opportunities to use initial /g/. Each page describes a body part, encouraging children to use 5-word sentences to re-tell the story. "Go away, sharp white teeth."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Children love re-telling the monster story.

I have used several ways to work on narratives with this story. We use these magnet board pieces while we read. They also make a great center activity when placed on a cookie sheet.

You can find these free printable storybook pieces at KizClub HERE.

Last year I found this cute puppet with velcroed pieces at Lakeshore. 

If you don't have the budget for that, you may want to make this simple set from a few pieces of felt. It was pretty easy and inexpensive.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Art offers plenty of opportunities for requesting and sentence construction. 

 We have tried several projects, here are two of my favorites.

Make a construction paper Big Green Monster.

The first one simply requires glue and construction paper. I pre-cut the body parts and put them in the bags. The children have to request what they need. I don't limit them to the colors in the book- let them be creative! Pinking shears make great scraggly hair, and a hole punch will make lots of little black circles for the pupils in the eyes, or just draw them on.

Try painting with this monster project.

If you are a little braver, get black construction paper, brushes, and tempera paints. 

1.Cut out eyes, ears, noses, mouths and teeth to add to your painting. 

2. Fold a large piece of paper in half. 

3. Have the children generously paint one side of the paper. We use green, purple and blue. 

4. Fold the paper in half again, with the paint on the inside. Press the whole surface of the paper.
5. Now open it up. You will have two sides. Symmetry anyone? 

6. Add the paper body parts with a bit of white glue to the painted face... you can do this while it's wet. 

I love seeing how each creation is different, and that is another great topic of conversation. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Go Away Big Green Monster Book Companion

I'm excited to share my new book companion for this wonderful story. I wanted additional opportunities to target speech and language, so I created some these monstrously fun activities. Take a peek!

Work on final s-blends and syntax.

 There are round cards for final /ps/, /ts/ and /ks/. Put the silly items in the monster's tummy, and say the sentence.

My children loved this activity today. You will also work on plurals, third person singular and irregular past tense "ate" with these hungry monsters.

Go Away Big Green Monster Companion

Practice articulation and sorting by categories.

There are colorful cards for articulation of initial /m/ and initial and final /g/. The cards double as a category sorting opportunity with this mat.

Go Away Big Green Monster Companion

Say the sentence as you smash the dough

Expand sentences and practice articulation at the sentence level, as you smash the balls of dough on these smash mats. This was a big hit in my room. (no pun intended)

Go Away, Big Green Monster Companion

Wh questions, Yes/ no questions, story comprehension, object function and prepositional concepts and an open-ended game too. 

I really like to have a wide variety of activities and targets in my packs, so that I can pull one... and done. It's so much easier to pull a single pack for the day, rather than searching for multiple activities to meet your caseload's needs.

You'll find cards for many targets. You can use them as you play Chomp! This is a fun open-ended spinner game. Use candy corn for teeth, or the included "teeth" to place on the squares in the monster's mouth. Be the first to collect a mouthful of teeth. Hope he doesn't bite!  

Go Away, Big Green Monster Companion

You can find my Go Away Big Green Monster in my store HERE.

Have a monstrously good time.

  I hope you enjoy a few spooky activities with your children this fall. I would love to hear about your favorite monster or other seasonal activities.

Until next time!