Flickr: bcompetent

by Kimberly Mayo-Achan MA, CCC_SLP

Halloween is a great time of year when children (and adults!) get excited to dress up as their favorite character, carve pumpkins, go trick-or-treating and play fun games with their friends and family. As mentioned in Part I, holidays provide a great opportunity to work on skills that children may have difficulty with. There are so many fun and educational ways to incorporate this great time of year into therapy and learning. Here are some more Halloween Therapy Treats to use with your kids to encourage the use of vocabulary and language!

Vocabulary Development: Pick a few magazines and go through them with your child. Stop when you see a picture related to Halloween, have your child label it and tell you as much as they can about the photo. Then, cut it out and paste it onto a piece of orange construction paper. Fill up the paper with as many different pictures as possible, laminate it (or use contact paper) and use it as a placemat! It’s a great conversation starter and this activity can be modified for any holiday. You’re kids will be proud of their work.

Flickr:Eldritch_the_dragon

Sentence/Story telling Development: Buy some Halloween stickers that contain simple pictures such as a cat, ghost, witch, haunted house or harvest photos of the fall season. Have your child use them to create a Halloween Scene on a piece of paper. Then ask them to create a few simple sentences or short story about the picture they created! Telling ghost stories and having your child participate is also a great exercise.

Describing Skills: Place a few shoe boxes next to each other on a table and fill them with Halloween related items. Close the lid then bring the child into the room. Have the child close his/her eyes (no peeking!) and remove one of the lids. Request that the child feels around inside the box and describe what they are feeling. Then have them try to guess what the object is based on the way it was described. Some ideas as to what to put inside the shoeboxes are plastic spiders, candy corn, lollipops, a witch’s hat, small pumpkins and a stuffed animal cat. This is also a great group activity.

There are so many ways to use Halloween in therapy or carryover sessions. Again, remember to have fun, be creative and use every moment as a learning (and teaching!) opportunity.

If you have any other fun tricks or treats for our readers, please let them know by commenting below.