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. Download FREE action rhymes Flutter Flutter Little Bat and Incy Wincy Spider and a lolly stick puppet bat and spider to bring them to life.
Children who are less confident, or reluctant to speak, may be happy to be encouraged to just listen and join in with the actions at first.
Colouring can be fun and a great way to encourage chatter when you share the picture or print two copies and have one each. You can download free Chatty Bat and spider colouring sheets.
Enjoy chitter chatter chatting about the spiders and bat as you colour in the pictiures together.
You can practise turn taking and listening skills too. 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.
As you talk about the pictures you can introduce and reinforce vocabulary with visual support. 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.
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…?”
These activities complement the Clickety Early Soundplay book Chatty Bat which is about a bat who loves to chitter chatter chat.
Listen to a clip here:
Checkout our Freebies page for even more Halloween fun!
