Happy Halloween, everyone! Here are a few fun ideas to incorporate into a Halloween-themed music therapy session or at home.

If a client has an individualized goal in regard to speech, there are plenty of unique and exciting Halloween sounds to incorporate into the session. Imagine you all turn into ghosts, witches, monsters, cats, owls, and any other spooky creature you can think of. There are a variety of sounds to vocalize while having a fun musical experience as motivation. Here’s an example activity below to the tune of Old McDonald Had a Farm.

Old McDonald had a haunted house, E-I-E-I- BOO!

And in that haunted house he had a GHOST, E-I-E-I- BOO!

With an ooo, ooo here and an ooo, ooo there,

Here an ooo, there an ooo, everywhere an ooo, ooo,

Old McDonald had a haunted house, E-I-E-I- BOO!

And in that haunted house he had a WITCH, E-I-E-I- BOO!

With a heeheehee here and a heeheehee there,

Here a heehee, there a heehee, everywhere a heeheehee,

Old McDonald had a haunted house, E-I-E-I- BOO!

Think of more Halloween creatures to sing about in other verses. Focus on specific vowels or consonant sounds specific to each individual. Model how to shape your mouth for each sound, such as making a circle with your lips to sing ooo, and make a smile to sing heeheehee. You can work on vocal inflection by singing different pitches for each sound, like a low, spooky ghost sound and a high squeaky witch laugh. You can even get creative with movement and pretend to dance around the room like each of these spooky creatures to work on gross motor skills at the same time. A more complex vocal sound is “tr” which can be used in the phrase “trick-or-treat!” Encourage everyone to work on enunciating this phrase by having a magical bag of secret instruments and asking them to say “trick-or-treat” to receive an instrument from the bag to use in the next activity!

If the client has an individualized goal related to motor skills development, Halloween-themed dances and movement games can be incorporated into the music therapy session. To work on gross motor skills, pretend to be skeletons and dance to the skeleton hokey pokey!

You put your foot bone in, you put your foot bone out,

You put your foot bone in, and you shake it all about

Do the skeleton hokey pokey and you turn yourself around,

Happy Halloween!

Repeat with knee bone, hand bone, elbow bone, etc. to complete the skeleton. You can also use a visual of a skeleton for each person to pick which bone is next. This will work on gross motor skills, coordination, turn-taking, following directions, left and right, body awareness, and body part identification.  

Halloween can also be a scary time for some. Music therapists can work with individuals on self-calming strategies for big feelings such as anxiety or fear. Music can help to relax, but can also be used to teach different emotional regulation techniques such as deep breathing, closing eyes, counting to ten, humming a tune, stretching arms, giving yourself a hug, and taking a break. These emotional regulation strategies can be generalized to many situations, including having an enjoyable, happy, and safe Halloween!