Grow literacy, creativity, and community with Millie Fleur’s Poison Garden activities! Students strengthen English Language Arts skills as they sequence the story, explore character traits, practice vocabulary, sort parts of speech, and respond through writing and discussion. Creative activities invite students to invent unusual flowers, design seed packets, build shaped flowers, and create silly stories while exploring the book’s themes of individuality, acceptance, and belonging. Perfect for spring, Halloween, or anytime you’re building a classroom community, these activities encourage students to appreciate what makes each person—and every garden—a little different.

As a result of the included activities, students will be able to:

• Trace and color images from the story.
• Build a shape flower.
• Illustrate new types of flowers.
• Sequence the story.
• Write sentences with story vocabulary.
• Alphabetize words from the story.
• Sort parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives).
• Write character traits.
• Define story vocabulary.
• Use shades of meaning to define vocabulary words.
• Design a seed packet.
• Apply Writing Skills with included writing templates and prompts.
• Practice Reading Comprehension with included discussion questions for the beginning, middle, and end of the book.
• Engage in Social Skills with included whole group prompts and activities.
• Develop Fine Motor Skills with included coloring, tracing, cutting, and gluing activities.
• Participate in Draw and Label activities.
• Use digital tools to create silly stories.

With these activities, students can grow their literacy skills while discovering that a thriving community has room for every wonderfully unusual bloom.

🌱 Prepare to grow something wonderfully unusual with more activities that mix literacy and creativity while celebrating everything that makes us different.

🌱 After downloading the Millie Fleur’s Poison Garden activities, dig into the story with your Novel Effect soundscape for a read-aloud that blooms with personality!

About the Book and Soundscape

In buttoned-up Garden Glen, every yard is identical—until Millie Fleur La Fae plants a marvelously strange garden the townspeople brand “poison.” As she searches for kindred spirits, the town learns to celebrate what makes them wonderfully weird.

Plant this story in your classroom collection and help students discover that the most interesting communities make room for every kind of bloom.