Story Activities for 

Flower Garden by Eve Bunting

Flower Garden is a stunningly illustrated, poetic story about a little girl's process of building a flower garden box as a birthday gift for her mom. Starting from the store to the bus ride home to her apartment and ending with her mom's arrival home, the reader follows the little girl's journey and excitement in creating this springtime gift. 

This story aligns with many learning objectives and pairs well with class garden projects. Just like the main character, you don't need much room to start a garden!

Check out these visuals and activities: 

Story Vocabulary

Review story vocabulary as you read. Display these new words on a word wall or match to the words in the book. 

WH Questions - Where? 

The main character journeys through different parts of town. As you read, ask students where the character is located. Her location is often inferred in descriptions of where the flowers are ("Garden in a shopping cart" - store, "Garden going up the stairs" - apartment building).

Sequence the main events and where the garden moved to in the story. 

Phonological Awareness:

Syllables

Use clothespins, bingo chips, or even balls of playdoh to match the number of syllables in each of these words found in the story..

Rhyming

Eve Bunting uses rhyme to captivate the reader adding to the beautiful melody of her words combined with the stunning illustrations. Have students look for the rymes in the book. 

Check out these activities using rhyming pairs form the book, 

Check out more rhyming activities

Prepositions

This story is filled with prepositions! "in a shopping cart", "on the checkout stand", "up the stairs". Practice and play with different prespositions. 

Hide flowers around the room. Have students identify where each flower is to a partner. "Behind the clock", "over the door", "under the table"...

Here are more floral preposition activities. 

Flower Science

Learn how to plant your own garden! Check out this story about planting flower seeds. 

Learn plant anatomy

Talk about the parts of a flower. Use scissors to dissect and sort parts of a flower on sorting mats. 

Discuss and create a life cycle of a plant. 

Or sequence the process of growing flowers. 

Writing and Drawing

Look at different types of flowers: roses, tulips, daffodils, etc. Compare and contrast the different kinds. Do a scientific drawing of 2 different types of flowers. 

Write the names of different types of flowers. 

Write about your own flower experience. 

Make your own coloring book!

Dramatic Play

Students can set up their own flower shop. Here is a visual with ideas of how to set up a play flower store. 

Art

Pretend to be a flower! 

Here are more flower ideas from the sharing center. 

Have fun learning and growing together!