Green thumb or plant novice, gardening might be your next favorite speech therapy theme for spring and summer. Just imagine all of the language opportunities within the topic of growing plants...
The sequence of planting seeds that grow to become flowers or vegetables. The parts of flowers. The verbs related to gardening. The similarities and differences between types of produce. The concepts related to growth, weather, and caring for plants. And so much more!
Besides all of the ways that gardening lends itself to language, the topic is also something that most students can relate to in one way or another. Some might have a flower or vegetable garden at their home or the house of a friend or family member. Students likely see gardens around their community. Gardening can teach students about the fruits and vegetables they buy from the store. Not to mention, the plant life cycle is a very relevant classroom theme that you can tie into therapy, too!
Ready to dig into some engaging garden-themed activities to target speech and language in speech therapy (including teletherapy)? Here we grow!
Garden Speech Therapy PDF Activities
One page out of this packet of mixed group activities is all you need for targeting language and speech with your elementary groups.... for an entire session! The picture is accompanied by built-in prompts for a variety of goals. It's easy to display the colorful page on a smartboard or teletherapy platform, or print the black and white version for students to draw or color on!
This garden-themed interactive PDF is the total package for targeting language with your preschool and early elementary students. The activities target everything from gardening vocabulary to formulating sentences to articulation. The clickable buttons and fillable text boxes make this activity interactive for a smartboard, iPad, or teletherapy platform!
Garden-Themed Boom Card Decks
Let your students' creativity run wild while making their own vegetable garden and practicing the hidden articulation targets. An open-ended slide (no speech words) is included to be a versatile language therapy activity!
In this Boom Card deck, the scene is already created and students get to explore it with a digital flashlight! Then can also find and check off garden vocabulary words for extra practice and language opportunities.
Garden Google Slides Activities for Speech Therapy
Digital stickers are one of the most flexible activities for virtual speech therapy. The stickers can be duplicated, moved around, and resized to help you target whatever speech or language goal you need to address. In the example below, vegetable and flower stickers (in Google Slides) are used to sort plants for each type of garden.
While you likely want your stickers (the vegetables and flowers in the example above) to be moveable, you may also want a background that is not able to be moved, like the garden images. I created the sorting background shown above, and you're more than welcome to make a free copy of the slide here. Just add your own vegetable and flower stickers to target the exact language goals that your students are working on. I think of it as digital play!
Garden-Themed Books
Search the following book titles/authors wherever you access digital versions of books (your local library, YouTube, websites, online stores, etc.):
The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle is a colorful story about flower growth.
From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons tells about and illustrates the transformation of flowers, trees, and plants as they grow.
Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert gives details of flower gardening from seeds to blossoms.
Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt by Kate Messner focuses on the changes that occur to dirt in a garden.
The Curious Garden by Peter Brown follows the story of a boy that cares for a garden that eventually spreads throughout the city.
The Ugly Vegetables by Grace Lin is about a girl that learns to love and appreciate her family's vegetable garden, rather than wishing for a flower garden.
Flower Garden by Eve Bunting is the story of a girl that helps her dad create a flower garden as a gift to her mother.
Garden-Themed Videos
Of course, there are a million videos on YouTube about gardening! This 2-minute animated video presents the process of how a flower grows and reproduces.
This Epic video teaches about many different types of flowers.
From Highlights High Five, this video tells a story of a boy and his dad planting a flower garden.
In this Sesame Street video, Grover talks about what plants need to grow.
Virtual field trips are another way to incorporate lots of language and learning into a session. Here's an example of a garden-themed virtual field trip!
Garden-Themed Activities for Younger Students
This Pinkalicious Musical Garden activity on the PBSKids.org website is a quick reinforcer for music-loving students.
For a game that uses some strategy, Let Me Grow is a puzzle activity on ABCya.com that students might enjoy.
Students help count Curious George's flowers in this PBSKids.org game.
Veggiezilla (also from PBSKids.org) is a cute, language-rich activity about vegetable gardening.
This Sesame Street activity on PBSKids.org walks students through simple garden activities.
I absolutely love this Sesame Street community garden activity for younger students. It includes an option for Spanish-speaking students, as well.
Help bugs land on flowers in this simple OwlieBoo.com activity.
Starfall.com's Garden Shop is perfect for teaching and practicing concepts of sequencing.
This flower memory game on matchthememory.com is always a hit, especially with the real, vibrant photos! Here's another one with more garden vocabulary and concepts. Don't forget that the site lets you change the number of pairs of any given game in the top right corner.
Garden-Themed Activities for Older Students
Wordless Simon Cat videos are always engaging for older students, and this one allows students to make inferences, tell narratives, explain humor, and more.
Similarly, this Readworks.org article talks about the rising popularity of gardens in large metropolitan areas, while this article informs about rooftop gardens.
National Geographic created this video on the topic of urban gardening.
Geared toward 9 to 12-year-olds, this book on getepic.com provides tons of information on flower gardening at home. It perfectly lends itself to working on vocabulary in context, main idea, and so many more goals.
Fill-in-the-blanks activities are never a flop with my older students, and they allow you to incorporate nearly any theme. In this hilariously engaging activity, students learn about a Three Sisters Garden to build upon their prior knowledge of the topic.
And there we have it– Bushels of garden-themed activities to use in speech therapy this spring and summer! Pick and choose your favorites to create your very own garden party and watch your students' engagement and progress grow like a weed.
Need some more spring or summer ideas for speech therapy? Check out these blog posts for activities to target articulation and language using a bug theme, camping theme, and 4th of July theme! And download these spring and summer spreadsheets for easy lesson planning!
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