Simple Speech--"The Tiny Seed" by Eric Carle

It's time for another SIMPLE SPEECH idea! Incorporating literacy in the speech therapy sessions has become a passion of mine. There are SO many ENDLESS opportunities for speech and language when a storybook is involved!

"The Tiny Seed" is on Amazon

One of my picks for April was "The Tiny Seed" by Eric Carle. If you are not familiar with this book, it is the story of a tiny seed that travels among other seeds across many lands until it finally lands on the ground. The seed begins to grow once it has water and sunlight and it ultimately becomes a huge flower that is taller than the houses and the trees. At the end of the story, the seed pouch opens up and new seeds blow in the wind in anticipation of growing into more beautiful flowers. I think this story is a fun expansion of the cycle from seed to plant and my students really seemed to enjoy it!

We used this story in speech to target so many goals including: vocabulary expansion, synonyms, descriptive language, compare/contrast, predictions, sequencing, story re-tell, story expansion, and articulation of /t, s, sm, pl/ to name a few! My students in articulation therpay became "speech detectives" and listened and looked for their target sound throughout the entire book, so we made it work for every sound in therapy! After we read the story, we made our own version of the story. The students retold the story while illustrating their own stories. We also practiced summarizing in first grade, and that was a bit of a challenge. This is how they turned out:

I expanded the activity based on the level of the students from PK-1st grade. First graders wrote their own sentences and expanded with more steps and more sentences.

After we completed our Tiny Seed stories, we planted "speech smiles". The students were required to come up with a list of items we would need to plant our own seeds and then describe "how to" plant and grow a seed. We planted several tiny seeds using Rye grass and gave them faces. Here is how they turned out:

Speech Smiles

We had such a great time with this activity and depending on the group, it took 3-4 sessions to complete all of the activities. One of their favorite parts of this activity has been watering and checking their plants daily. My students working on R were VERY excited that they could see ROOTS in their plants. I hope you have as much fun with this activity as we did!

~Orlanda