18 Fun Halloween Activities for Speech Therapy and Teletherapy

• By Beata Klarowska, M.S. CCC-SLP
• Tuesday, October 30, 2018

18 Fun Halloween Activities for Speech Therapy and Teletherapy

Halloween is children’s most favorite holiday of the year. It’s all the costumes, all the candies and scary yet magical decorations that have this amazing effect on children. They just simply love the spirit of Halloween and get so excited talking about it.

My own kids started talking about Halloween at least a month ago and they inspired me to write this very blog. They talk about costumes- the ones they like and the ones they don’t like. They make their own costumes out of blankets and hats and toiler paper and then just laugh and goof around. They ask me to stop at almost every single house that’s Halloween ready on the way to school and comment on all the funny and creepy decorations. I turn on my scary voice and they pretend to be scared. They bring fun Halloween artwork form school and proudly talk about it. 

So many speech and language opportunities during this time of the year! Think about all the s-blends and concepts, vocabulary, describing that we can target around this holiday!

Here are a few Halloween activities for both brick and molar speech therapy and teletherapy (telepractice). The below activities are open ended and you can use them to practice describing, answering questions, predicting, inference, story retelling, problem solving, etc.

1. Review Halloween vocabulary, e.g. monster, ghost, etc., watching YouTube video-“ Kids vocabulary-Halloween- Halloween monster costumes-English educational video for kids”
2. Listen to songs related to Halloween, e.g. “Who took the Candy? - Halloween Song by Super Simple Songs (great YouTube channel with simple songs and rhymes for younger children).
3. Play online Halloween Games http://www.nickjr.com/halloween/
4. “My creepy Halloween box”- put some spiders, spider webs, skeletons; candy, etc. in the box covered with a piece of fabric and asks the children to guess what you have in the box. Pull out the object, let them name it or describe it or make up a sentence, etc.
5. “There is a spider on my head- oh no!!!” This is a fun activity for younger children. Using toy spiders of different sizes and colors, put a spider on your body parts, e.g. face, head etc. Be silly saying something like: “Oh no there is a spider on my head.” or “Where is the spider now?” You can use this for practicing body parts, sentence structure, etc.
6. Listen to a story read aloud about a pumpkin via YouTube, e.g. “From seed to Pumpkin- Kids Stories Read Aloud | Children Read Along | Fun Stories Play”
7. Watch a YouTube video about growing pumpkins such as

   ”Curious George - Pumpkin Educational Halloween Video Story For Children English”

8. Bring your pumpkin/s: different sizes, color, and texture: talk about them, show them to your student, ask students to describe them, etc.
9. Watch a YouTube video about a pumpkin curving.
10. Watch a YouTube video about Halloween costumes, e.g. “75+ DIY Homemade Halloween Costumes for Kids”. This is a slide show video demonstrating different Halloween costumes.
11. Take a virtual field trip to the pumpkin patch with YouTube, e.g. “Field Trip to the Pumpkin Patch – LittleStoryBug” or “Miss Stephanie's Virtual Field Trip to a Pumpkin Patch & an Apple Orchard”
12. Read an article about history of Halloween (older students), e.g. history.com/topics/Halloween
13. Learn about Halloween around the Word watching a YouTube video- Halloween Educational Video for Students Episode!
14. Find some fun Halloween jokes for children online
15. Using a whiteboard ask children to design a Halloween card or their own costume. This is what I designed using a whiteboard in TheraPlatform.

    

16. Talk about interesting facts about spiders and bats: Kids ‘National Geographic has a few interesting pictures and facts about spiders and bats.
17. Plan a Haunted house (with older students) discussing:
    • Budget
    • Materials
    • How would they decorate the inside and outside the house? Etc.
18. Plan a Halloween Party

Note: If you’re using TheraPlatform, simply copy and paste the title of the YouTube videos to TheraPlatform and you’ll be able to watch them with your clients or students.

Need tips and resources for telepractice or teletherapy? Visit https://www.theraplatform.com/Blog