Halloween Recipes for Cooking AAC Style!

October 24, 2013 by Robin Parker - Leave your thoughts

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Cooking is a great activity as the platform for meaningful language experiences for both children and adults. Halloween often involves candy and tasty treats. However, there are also plenty of healthy Halloween foods (e.g., carrot pumpkins, tangerine & celery pumpkins, or apple teeth to name just a few). Then comes Thanksgiving and all the recipes that go along with it (e.g., lots of opportunity for repetition with variety).

Everyone can be involved with cooking, although just because you cook doesn’t mean you need a stove. From spooky chex mix to more elaborate cookie and cake decorations, there is a ton of active participation and conversation that can be incorporated into cooking. And the fun and rewards (eating) are built-in. Although there are plenty of Halloween recipes, many recipes can be turned ‘spooky’ with an addition/modification of Halloween shapes or colors.

You can cook using core words and/or focusing on the fringe vocabulary. We love when activities have clear beginning, middles, and ends because there are opportunities for talking about what will happen, what is happening, and what did happen which corresponds to talking about past, present, and future events. For cooking activities, gathering the ingredients serves as the beginning of the activity (e.g., “got it”, “got them”, “where is it”). Making the food is the middle with recipes serving as mini-schedules (e.g., “what’s next”, “did we do that”, “I will do that one”), and the finished food is the end with either an eating time or a packaging time (although at least a taste probably should always be allowed).

Enjoy these Halloween recipes and please pass on your favorites so we can continue to build our visual recipe library.

Sample Recipes with Visual Supports (all free)