Spider and bat themed rhymes and activities are popular around Halloween and are a fun way to develop children’s listening, understanding and talking.
Reciting or singing nursery rhymes is a great way to develop children’s rhyme awareness – you can download free rhymes and lolly stick puppets which bring them to life here.
Children who are less confident, or reluctant to speak, may be happy to be encouraged to just listen and join in the actions at first.
Colouring can be fun when you share the picture or print two copies and have one each. You can download free Chatty Bat and spider colouring sheets here.
Chat about the bat and spiders. Children are likely to have seen spiders and their webs and may have some ideas about where they live. But have they (or you) ever seen a bat? “I wonder where they live…?”
As you talk about the pictures you can introduce and reinforce vocabulary. For example: spiders have lots of legs and bats have big ears and wings. As you share a colouring activity children will have lots of opportunities to hear and to practise using these words.
Colouring activities give you opportunities to count and talk about size and colours too:
“The spiders have lots of legs. I wonder how many … shall we count them …?”
As you colour in the pictures take turns to tell each other what to do:
“Colour the little spider’s body orange”
“Colour the big spider’s legs green.”
Keep listening and chatting throughout the activity.
These activities complement the Clickety Early Soundplay book Chatty Bat which is about a bat who loves to chitter chatter chat.
