Halloween is a favorite time of the year for many children. They love dressing up and going trick or treating with friends and family members. The easiest way to get kids to participate in speech therapy activities is to make those activities fun and relevant to the season. Halloween is no exception.
- Pumpkin Bingo
This simple game is easy to make, but will keep your kiddos engaged for long periods of time. Make your own bingo boards using Halloween words or images, and cut out small pieces of paper for them to cover the spaces with. Then, draw from a pile of words or pictures on index cards. When they get five in a row, they yell “Bingo!” and you can give them a special prize just for winning.
- Scary Sorting
For this activity, you’ll need picture cards of different Halloween-themed items like bats, vampires and pumpkins. Print out the picture cards, cut them all out, and then have your kids sort them into groups! They can sort them by scary and not scary, or by the first letter of each word. You can change it up however you want.
- Pumpkin Smash
The first activity is called “Pumpkin Smash”. The goal of this game is to get your child to say their speech sounds with the correct rate and inflection. To play the game, you will need to draw a pumpkin on a piece of paper or print one out. Next, tape or glue that image onto a thick piece of cardboard (or cut it out). Tape that image onto the wall. Finally, take a ball of yarn and wrap it around the pumpkin about 50 times until it looks like a mummy.
To play the game, have your child stand across from the pumpkin and toss a soft ball at it. If they hit the pumpkin, then they have succeeded in smashing it. If they miss, then they have failed at smashing it. As your child hits the pumpkin, instruct them to say their speech sound correctly each time they smash it.
- Pumpkin Painting
This is a great activity for kids to practice describing things. It’s fun to describe the shape, color, size, and texture of the pumpkin. If you want to make it more challenging, you can ask your child about their favorite parts of the pumpkins. If you want to make it even more challenging, you can ask them about the feelings and emotions they associate with pumpkins or Halloween.
- Pumpkin Seeds
There are lots of different ways that your child can use pumpkin seeds in speech therapy activities. You can have your child sort them by size or shape and then describe them in detail. You can also use the seeds in games like “I Spy” or “Guess That Number.”
- Ghost Storytelling
It’s fun to come up with different types of ghosts and tell stories about them. For example, maybe there is a ghost who lives in your house and loves to eat chocolate chip cookies.
- Trick or Treat Bag
This is another opportunity for your child practice describing objects. They could also use descriptive words when talking about what they put in their bag (candy corn vs candy bars).
- Candy Sorting
Have your students sort the candy by shape, color, and size. Then have them describe the candy with ‘soft’ or ‘hard’ words. For example: “The Milky Way bar is soft and brown. The Snickers bar is hard and orange.” This activity works on sorting skills, vocabulary development, as well as size concepts.