Board Out of My Mind

I'm so glad Erin posted about planting flowers because I was SO going to do that, but with the gloomy (and frigid) weather, I have lost all motivation to garden. Which I didn't have much of anyway since I have absolutely no skills in that department. I consider it my one weakness. Anyway, on to flowers. The Z-girl and I made flower name cards for our Family Home Evening board. It went a little something like this:

Supplies:
Paper
Your preferred method of adhesive
Anything you want to decorate your flowers with (for me that was crayons and still more paper)
Ribbon/String/Yarn to hang flowers
Flower Template (if you don't trust yourself to draw a perfectly symmetrical flower)



Since I have a 2-yo I just let her scribble on the papers and then I incorporated those papers into the flowers. I kept it simple mostly because this is all my child is capable of and my craft closet consists mostly of scrapbooking supplies which are mostly too expensive to let a toddler play with. I know, I'm working on it. I had to finish some of it after she went to bed because she lost interest before I did, but she did master the words "glue," "scissors," and "push harder"- she holds the end of the crayon in her little bitty fingers and skims it across the page (or table, or wall). Here is the result:


In hindsight, I probably would have laminated the flowers. I also would have hung that sign about three inches higher. I forget how tall that kid is until she's pulling things off the wall.

Board Out of My Mind

http://laugh-learn-love.blogspot.com/2008/04/board-out-of-my-mind.html

Flowers and Dirt and Butterflies, Oh My!

Well, I have no natural craft abilities whatsoever. I'm going to have to take lessons from Deneal. I love the thumbprint flowers, by the way. But I took the challenge upon myself to figure out fun learning activities for my children that pertain to our theme of the week, flowers. So, this is what we did:

Target has small flowerpots with seeds and dirt in their dollar section. (You take it home and plant it.) I let each of my children choose a flower, and we brought them home and planted the seeds. We talked about what flowers need in order to grow, and after we planted them we looked up information on each flower on the internet so we could learn about when their flowers would start sprouting and what they would look like full grown.

Patting the seeds into the wet soil

One boy chose a sunflower, and one chose zinnias

Next, we went to Reiman Gardens, a fantastic indoor and outdoor garden famous for its butterfly garden (and, therefore, has colorful flowers). We checked out all of the flowers, inside and out, and wrote down the names of the flowers we liked best.

Smelling flowers (and talking about which ones smell good, which ones stink, and which ones are the prettiest in their opinions)

Angel's Trumpet...the kids like these

Their favorite flower of all? This one, called anthurium.

We learned a lot, and had a lot of fun as well!

Flowers and Dirt and Butterflies, Oh My!

http://laugh-learn-love.blogspot.com/2008/04/flowers-and-dirt-and-butterflies-oh-my.html

Fragrant Flower Match and Thumb Print Flowers

Fragrant Flower Matching

Supplies: paper muffin cups (all colors), cotton balls, construction paper, glue, variety of fragrances

Steps:

1. take a muffin cup and flatten it (You can also cut slits or small triangles in it, but we forgot to until the end)

2. glue a second muffin cup in the center of the first one

3. make some stems on your construction paper (we used green straws, but you could also cut green construction paper, use pipe cleaners, paint Popsicle sticks or simply paint a green stem on the paper)

4. glue your flowers on/above the stems

5. choose a few different fragrances (we used perfume, after shave, and vanilla flavoring. Other ideas: lemon, mint, cinnamon, etc.). Put each scent on two cotton balls and glue them to the center of your flowers when they are dry.

6. You can do smelling matching game using the flowers. See if your child, or you, can put the flowers in their correct pairs. It helps to make a mark on the back of the papers as you attach the cotton balls to help you remember which ones go together. We matched our cotton balls together before gluing them on.

Thumb Print Flower Counters

Supplies: finger paint, paper to paint on, pen

Steps:

1. Using their thumbs, your children can create a colorful garden full of petals to count. One thumb print for the center and a different color thumb print for the petals. We used index fingers for extra ease.2. After their garden has dried, together you can number the petals on each flower and/or number the flowers in their garden. As you can see this didn't quite work for us since my busy artist chooses to follow his own creative instructions. Ah well, he had fun.

Fragrant Flower Match and Thumb Print Flowers

http://laugh-learn-love.blogspot.com/2008/04/fragrant-flower-match-and-thumb-print.html

Theme of the Week Challenge

We're starting out with an easy one to get everyone going. Our very first Theme of the Week Challenge is inspired by spring: flowers. I am ready for warmer weather! Here is the challenge: come up with songs, books, ideas, games, thoughts, activities, crafts, etc. that pertain to flowers and then share them with the rest of us.

I will even help you get into gear by starting with two ideas: click here to learn the parts of the flower (it even has an interactive quiz that would be fun for older children), and click here to print a Nick Jr.'s Flower Garden Journal.

If you want to post a comment about what you did and how it went, that's great. If you want to create a post with pictures and more details, that's fantastic! Please label it "Theme of the Week Challenge" and "flowers" so everyone can find it down the road. We are looking forward to hearing your great ideas and trying them in our homes.

Theme of the Week Challenge

http://laugh-learn-love.blogspot.com/2008/04/theme-of-week-challenge.html