Spring Crafts and Books for Speech

Spring seems to have finally settled in so that means I can bust out all my fun books about sunshine and warm weather, YAY!  Today I wanted to share two of my favs and a cute, quick craft.

First up is Splat the Cat: Oopsie Daisy.  This is part of the Splat the Cat series if you’re not familiar with it.  It is a sweet story that is fantastic for vocabulary, sequencing, predicting, etc.  Also, it is great to read if you are planning on doing something with your kids for Mother’s Day.  This books is just the right level for my K-2 crowd.

Next up is a super fun book called Plantzilla.  It is a absolutely fabulous for targeting inferencing with my older, 3-5 crowd.  Yes, even my 5th graders like it. They have never said anything about it being ‘babyish’.  The book is a little similar to Little Shop of Horrors.  You know, the play/movie where the plant comes alive and starts to eat, well, people.  This plant is a lot more PG but plenty of crazy stuff happens.  The inferential clues in the  illustrations and text are subtle, but not too subtle to go over their heads. I also like how it is written in the form of the main character writing letters rather than a traditional narration. It is a fun and different book, which is why I think my kids always enjoy it.

Now, onto our craft.  After I read Splat the Cat: Oopsie Daisy with my K-2 friends we went deeper into the floral and gardening world and learned some vocab, did  some sequencing, described and labeled some plant parts, etc.  Then we made our own flowers so could put their new found knowledge to use.  All you need are pom poms, aka fuzz balls ), green pipe cleaners, crayons, glue or glue sticks, and some blue construction paper.  If you have one of those glue sponge containers this would be a great opportunity to use it.  I don’t but this craft made me wish I did.  Oh well, put it on the To Do list for next year, right?  The glue sticks worked fine though.

I showed them my example first, and then asked them to tell me what they thought each piece was in the picture.  Then they picked their fuzz balls, you will need 6 per flower, and pipe cleaner.  Tip: the pipe cleaners were too long but are the perfect size if you cut them in half. Glue the pipe cleaner down first  in the middle of the page, but be sure to have the kids leave room at the top for the fuzz balls. After the pipe cleaner is down have them glue on their fuzz balls in a circular pattern.  Then they can decorate their paper with the crayons.  I was very excited to see most of my kids added dirt under their grass in their drawings.  One friend made sure to remind me that his flower needed the dirt to live like in the story.   It was a proud SLP moment. 😉

If you want to continue the gardening theme in your room I suggest planting actual seeds. I did this last year and it was hit! Plus, the kids took them home as Mother’s Day gifts.  To skip some of the mess you can use the pre-package soil cups that you submerge in water rather than getting a bag of potting soil, but that is up to you.  I used this spring and gardening activity packet to go over flower and gardening vocab, etc, so the activity would make a bigger impact on the kids and they could have some background knowledge.

If you want a little more information about the books or craft you watch my chat about them on SLPBloggerLive.