Flower Power Speech Activities
May is here, and all of the April showers have brought many beautiful flowers. Take time to appreciate the beauty of flowers and their power to engage kids. Mix up May flowers into speech and language sessions. Incorporate different goals and skills that need focus and add some colorful flowers for kids to take home to add a splash of spring time fun into carry over. We have some suggestions on flower-related activities for the month of May and the spring season!
Word blend family flowers
For younger children working on blending sounds, flower word families are a great art project that can go home for additional practice. Give each child a sheet of construction paper to make several flowers. Make flower stems with pipe cleaners, crayons, or pieces of green paper. The flowers will be made using cupcake liners. Cut down the side to the center to make four to six petals around the middle. In the center, circle write the word family that you are targeting. This could be -an, -ab, -et, or any other that the individual students are working on. Discuss what words have that sound in them and what happens when you add the letter in front. Work together to complete several flowers and go around making up silly stories using the words together.
Make a digraph flower garden
To make a digraph flower garden you will need construction paper, a marker, glue stick, and scissors. Cut out construction paper circles for the center of the flowers. This is what you will be writing the digraphs on like |sh| |ch| |th|. Have each child glue the three flower centers onto green stems on their larger sheet of construction paper. Next, brainstorm words that have the digraphs mentioned at the start and end. Write these onto flower petals to surround the center. Practice using the words together and again make up a silly story going around a circle together.
Pronoun petal power patch
Pronouns can be tricky for many kids, especially multilingual learners. A fun activity is to make pronoun flowers. You will need construction paper, scissors, glue sticks, and markers to make these vibrant flowers. Assign each child a different pronoun (he, she, it, they, or we). The center of the flower will have a pronoun written on it. Then, use flower petals surrounding each pronoun with examples of he, she, it, they, or we. The petal examples may be glued into the flower. When finished, these would make a great speech and language display for a bulletin board. Everyone can take turns and share similarities and differences.
Each of these flower power projects could be sent home with instructions on how students can use them for practice at home. Be sure to include translations of words and directions for multilingual families as needed. Home connections are a great way to encourage kids to work on skills and goals with their families.