27 Awesome Auditory Activities

Sometimes our kids may not follow the instructions we give- not necessarily trying to defy us. Instead, they may just need some help to work on their auditory skills. This includes a wide variety of abilities, from processing and understanding speech to sound discrimination. Below you’ll find a list of 27 awesome auditory activities which focus on sound discrimination and getting your kiddos to practice following speech commands and picking up cues from their environment. 

1. Simon Says

Simon says, “touch your head!”. Your kids can practice their auditory skills as they follow Simon’s instructions. But, if Simon doesn’t say “Simon says…” prior to the command, your kids must avoid doing it!

Learn More: Icebreaker Ideas

2. Do As I Say, Not As I Do

Here’s a similar game to Simon Says. You can say a command while doing a different action. For example, you might say, “Touch your head”, while simultaneously rubbing your belly. Your kids can make it to the next round by only touching their heads.

Learn More: Mosswood Connections

3. Red Light, Green Light

This game is fun for developing auditory processing skills. The green light means to run, and the red light means stop. The goal is to make it from one side of a court to the other without running when the word red is said!

Learn More: Playworks

4. What’s the Time, Mr. Wolf?

One kid can play Mr. Wolf with their back turned away from the others. The others can ask Mr. Wolf about the time. His response is the number of steps that they can move forward. Once it’s “dinnertime”, the wolf can turn around and chase the students.

Learn More: Kid Spot

5. All Ears Bean Bag Toss

I love a good bean-tossing game, and this one includes an auditory component! For each round of toss, you can give different instructions. For example, “Toss one red bag”. Making it more difficult, you could say, “Toss a bag with a color that rhymes with a shoe”. 

Learn More: Mosswood Connections

6. Musical Chairs

I love this classic activity! Kids can walk around a circle of chairs with music playing. Once the music stops, everyone races to sit. There will be one less chair than the number of players so they better respond fast!

Learn More: Party Games 4 Kids

7. Freeze Dance

If you have limited time and don’t want to set up chairs for the last activity, freeze dance is a great alternative. Your kids can dance it out while you play music, but once they hear the music stop they must freeze! 

Learn More: First 5 California

8. Fill the Backpack Game

This activity can be good practice for training your kids to pack their backpacks all on their own. You can start by speaking a list of 1-step instructions. Then, you can move on to 2-step instructions, 3-step instructions, and so on.

Learn More: Little Bins for Little Hands

9. Instructions with Background Noise

You can make the previous instructional backpack activity more difficult by playing some music in the background. Playing background music will make it harder for your kids to focus on your instructions. This is a practice of auditory figure-ground discrimination.

Learn More: Child Psych

10. Telephone

In this group activity, the first child can start by whispering a message into their neighbor’s ear. The whispered message is passed along until the last student must then say the message loud and clear. There are good chances that the message will be a bit jumbled by the end so learners must listen well.

Learn More: Encourage Play

11. Sound Matching Game

How are your kids’ auditory discrimination skills? You can fill two sets of different colored plastic eggs with various materials for your kids to shake. Make one of each color have matching insides. Then, your kids can try matching the eggs based on the sounds that they create.

Learn More: Play to Learn Preschool

12. Syllable Counting

Phonemic awareness is the understanding that spoken words consist of individual sounds i.e. syllables. This is an important part of auditory development. In this activity, your kids can sort objects by the number of syllables their name contains.

Learn More: My Montessori Journey

13. Letter Sound Matching Activity

At times, learners will struggle with the initial letter sound of words. This activity can help improve these discrimination skills. You can present two letters and an object. After you say the object’s name, your kids can choose the correct initial letter sound.

Learn More: Stay-At-Home Educator

14. Picture Sorting

Can your kids sort the pictures using their initial sounds? You can start by placing letters on the wall and sounding them out. Then, name the pictured objects and animals and have your kids try to sort them!

Learn More: Mrs. Wills Kindergarten

15. Matching Sounds to Pictures

Your kids can flick the spinner and pronounce the letter it lands on. Then, they can find a matching picture with the same initial letter sound.

Learn More: Mrs. Wills Kindergarten

16. Sound Matching Sensory Bin

Instead of sorting pictures, you can make use of this sensory activity for some added hands-on learning. Fill a bin with rice and various objects accompanied by sheets of letters. Then, your kids can sort the objects by their matching initial letter sound.

Learn More: Busy Toddler

17. Find the Same Sound

Here is another letter sound discrimination activity. You can print out pictures of two objects that have a similar letter sound. Challenge your kids to determine what sound it is! For example, nap and pot share the “p” sound. 

Learn More: Babbling Abby

18. Word Guessing Activity

This activity includes 3-letter words that have one hidden letter that your kids must try to guess. They will naturally practice discriminating the sounds of letters as they try different word variations. For example, they can discriminate “did” versus “dad”. 

Learn More: Babbling Abby

19. Auditory Discrimination Training Cards

This set of digital cards contains word pairs that you can use to test your kids’ auditory discrimination skills. It also includes interactive boxes for them to check off after listening to the words.

Learn More: Teachers Pay Teachers

20. Discrimination of Nature Sounds

I love any excuse to get out into nature! You can visit a local park and have your kids listen to what they can hear. Along with noting what they hear, they can discriminate the sounds that are near vs far, loud vs soft, and high vs low.

Learn More: Scholar Within

21. Guess the Animal Sound Game

You can use this online game to teach and have your younger kids guess the sounds of different animals. They can tap around and explore the animals themselves or you can play a sound for them and ask them what animal it comes from.

Learn More: Educa Gaming

22. Clap Along to Music

Maybe your kids want to be booming musicians one day! Then, it only makes sense to teach a lesson on rhythm. You can find various videos online (or play your own music) to teach them to clap to the beat!

Learn More: Green Bean’s Music

23. Guess the Instrument

For another musical lesson, your kids can practice identifying and discriminating the sounds of different instruments. It’s best to teach them the sounds of the instruments before trying this activity.

Learn More: Virtual Speech Center

24. The Listening Game

This activity acts as a listening exercise and a meditative practice. Your kids can see how long they can hear the bell chime. As they practice round after round, they will notice their hearing getting better!

Learn More: Cosmic Kids Yoga

25. Battleship

This was one of my favorite games growing up. I enjoyed lining up the coordinates to guess where I could hit my partner’s ship. The game can improve auditory perception skills as your kids must listen to their partner read out the coordinates in order to strategically place their battleship. 

Learn More: Amazon

26. Sounds at Home

Sounds at Home is a mobile app game developed by a Speech Language Pathologist to help facilitate auditory learning. This game includes identifying sounds, rhyming activities, and following verbal instructions.

Learn More: Virtual Speech Center

27. Paper Cup Phone

You can teach your kids the science of sound with this fun STEM activity. You can poke a hole in the bottoms of two cups and attach a string between them. One cup can be spoken into while the other is used for listening. 

Learn More: There’s Just One Mommy