Gardening is a fun and functional way to target your child’s speech and language goals. A few ideas about how to target various receptive, expressive, and pragmatic language goals are listed below. We always encourage you to contact your child’s Speech-Language Pathologist to discuss more ways to target goals and support your child with various activities at home!
Following Directions:
Gardening is a fun way to work on following directions and it is a good way to practice for all ages! The complexity of the direction can be modified to meet each child’s current goals. Speak with your child’s Speech-Language Pathologist if you have any questions about what types of directions and language would best for your child. Here are a few examples:
One Step:
Spatial:
“Put the seed in the hole”
“Take the seed out of the hole”
“Put the rose behind the sunflower”
“Put the rose next to the sunflower”
Containing qualitative concepts:
“Put the seed in the small hole”
Containing quantitative concepts:
“Give me three seeds”
“Give me all of the seeds”
“Give me some of the seeds”
Two Step
Sequential:
“Get the shovel, then dig a hole”
Sequential containing basic concepts:
“Get the blue shovel, then dig a little hole”
Temporal:
"Before you get the seeds, get the shovel”
“After you get the shovel, dig a hole”
Conditional:
“If the seed is in the hole, you can cover it”
“If the shovel is blue, then dig a hole”
Inferencing:
Spend time talking about what you know about gardening, and the seeds that you are planting. After organizing the information that you “know,” talk together about what you might not know and make inferences about what might happen next. For some kids, it is difficult to feel confident about making guesses for unknowns, so this is a good opportunity to work together. Feel free to make some silly guesses and talk about why they might be silly! Inferencing can be intimidating, but it can be helpful to make it fun! The goal is not about being right/wrong. It is about using the information that we know, combining it without experiences, and using it to make sense of information that is unknown. Be sure to offer motivating responses such as, “That is a creative idea,” or “I like that you are making guesses!” Here are some ideas:
Which plant do you think will be the tallest?
What will happen if an animal comes into the garden?
What might happen if we do not water the garden?
Group Play and Turn Taking:
From pulling weeds, digging dirt, organizing the garden layout, planting the seeds and watering the garden, gardening is a lot of work! This is a great opportunity to involve all of the “gardening group members” within a shared activity involving a variety of social skills that can be modified for a variety of age groups.
Turn taking and sharing materials
Working together to create a plan, and compromising so that all members have a say in the final product of the garden (i.e., which plants will go in, where they will go)
An adult can initiate a conversation about the group member’s preferred topics during gardening, or initiate conversation about each child’s previous experience or current outlook about gardening. For example:
What do you all like about gardening?
What was the hardest part about gardening?
Have you ever helped with gardening before?
Do you like flowers? Which is your favorite?
Narrative Formulation and Responding to WH Questions:
Take pictures while you are gardening and use the pictures as visual supports for formulating a personal narrative. This task can be modified for a variety of speech goals. Some children may be motivated to look at the pictures and listen to adult’s model sentences describing each image. Other children may be motivated to respond to questions (i.e., who, what, when, where) about the pictures. You can also encourage your child to tell you a story about his/her experience with gardening. Reach out to your child’s Speech-Language Pathologist to see if your child may benefit from a graphic organizer, or use of specific language that would support your child with these language goals.
Describing:
A garden has the potential to be filled with a variety of flowers, vegetables, insects, and (hopefully not) animals! Talk with your child about various categories related to gardening (i.e., plants, vegetables, bugs, animals, tools, weather). Practice labeling the features (i.e., color, size shape) and parts (i.e., step, roots, leaves, petals) of items within your garden. Games such as “I Spy” can be fun to play within your garden as well to target these goals within a fun and motivating activity. More ways to describe items are listed:
Category (what group does it belong to?)
Feature (what does it look like?)
Function (what does it do? What do we do with it?)
Parts (what elements make up this item?)
Location (where do you find it?)
Composition (what is it made out of?)
