How to Practice Visual-Spatial Skills on Halloween
It is that time of the year again, leaves start to fall, the air gets crisper, and kids buzz around the excitement of October 31st. There are many fun activities surrounding Halloween that gives families a chance to bond with their children. Traditionally pumpkin carving, costume creating and cozying up to Halloween movies. This year, try our Spooky Scavenger hunt as a new creative way to prepare for the holiday while teaching your kids about different senses! This easy hunt can take place with a few simple instructions.
What You Need:
🎃Bright Flashlights
🎃Mini Packet 34 – Spooky Scavenger Hunt.
🎃Tasty treats
🎃Brave children to explore the hunt
What To Do:
Start by printing out our Mini Packet 34 – Spooky Scavenger Hunt. Before you go out into the neighborhood have each kid solve the mini packet at home. Ask each child to make a list of the items they had to find in the packet. Once the proper walking attire has been put on, let the adventure begin! As each child starts to walk around the neighborhood, have them try and find the items on their list.
While a scavenger hunt is a fun activity for kids, it also addresses many different skill areas. It is important to have kids practice such skills to teach them well rounded skills. Here are a few of the skills kids build upon during the Halloween scavenger hunt.
Halloween is a very interactive holiday, with kids being around other kids, adults, and even animals. They have a chance to learn normal social skills on how to interact with others. Simple lessons like saying hello and thank you at the door they are trick-or-treating at, creates social talking skills. Effective communication is an essential part of social skills, and completing this scavenger hunt packet will help improve that skill.
Cognitive Skills
Cognitive skills are important for kids to learn early on because they train your brain to think, read, learn, reason and pay attention. Kids go through each of these skills with the Halloween scavenger hunt packet. They need to put on their “thinking caps” to observe and read the instructions and figure out what comes next. They are learning by applying what they see in real life to the skill packet. Reasoning skills come into play when kids need to figure out which steps come next. Paying attention is crucial during the Halloween scavenger hunt packet because kids need to observe the packet closely and follow instructions.
Visual Perceptual Skills
These skills are another essential learning skill for kids because it gives them the ability to make sense, interpret, and understand what they are seeing. An example of this is visual discrimination, which is essentially matching two of the same object, and visual memory which is remembering visual information. These two skills are practiced by looking at the scavenger hunt key images, and matching them to items in real life.
Happy Hunting!
Having your kids participate in activities like our mini packet and scavenger hunt can give them a fun way to spend time with family and friends, while improving their skills. The holiday is meant to be fun, but does not need to take away from creating activities that form a well rounded kid.