This October, our social skills groups are diving into pumpkin, fall, and Halloween-themed activities designed to help participants develop a wide range of essential skills. These engaging themes provide a fun, seasonal backdrop for practicing crucial social-emotional learning concepts.
Activities for Younger Social Butterflies
For our younger social groups (often referred to as early childhood or pre-K social skills), we focus on simple, yet effective, team-building games. A favorite is “pumpkin hunting,” which involves hiding small plastic Halloween decorations or fall-themed toys around the classroom or playground.
How it works: We divide the children into small teams and challenge them to find as many hidden pumpkins as possible.
Target Skills: This exercise is a fantastic early team-building activity that encourages cooperation and introduces basic concepts of group work and shared goals.
Advanced Teamwork for Older Groups
Our older social groups (often geared toward elementary school social skills or peer interaction skills) engage in more complex tasks to refine their collaborative problem-solving abilities. These activities include team Halloween crossword puzzles or Halloween word search puzzles.
The Communication Challenge: We pair participants and instruct them to choose a “seeker/searcher” and a “writer.”
The “seeker/searcher” must find the word in the puzzle. Critically, they must use expressive language skills to describe where the word is to the writer without using any gestures or non-verbal communication (like pointing).
The “writer” must listen to the verbal directions and circle the correct word.
Skill Focus: This setup is an intense workout for verbal communication skills and active listening. It naturally incorporates compromising techniques as the partners choose their roles and must work together to succeed.
Key Target Social Skills and Learning Goals
Across all these seasonal social activities, our focus remains on targeting specific social and communication goals for our participants:
- Team Building & Collaboration: Working successfully with at least one peer to achieve a common goal.
- Problem-Solving: Using appropriate language and strategies to complete a challenge with peers.
- Turn-Taking: Practicing reciprocal interaction and sharing roles or materials.
- Self-Regulation: Especially for the “seeker/searcher,” practicing impulse control and managing frustration when they can ONLY use words to communicate.
- Language Development: Utilizing prepositions (e.g., above, next to, under) and attributes (e.g., long, vertical, the fourth letter) to relay precise information.
- Following Directions: Comprehending and executing instructions that incorporate prepositions and attributes.
- Language Comprehension: Answering WH questions (who, what, where, when, why).
These sessions provide a fun, structured environment for practicing social skills and transferring learned techniques to real-world interactions!