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LEARNING WITH FLOWERS
Learning through flowers can happen any time of the year, however, May is a special time filled with May Day, Lei Day and flower festivals. May is the time of year when you need to drag your preschoolers outside and help them connect with nature. Pictures of flowers are fine, plastic flowers are ok, but real learning happens when children interact with real flowers. |
SKILLS TAUGHT |
Discovery Skills – Flowers can help children discover and understand growth, changes, life and death.
Social Skills – Planting seeds and creating new life is very exciting for preschoolers. Learning to care for and nurture things can help prepare children for future roles in life.
Math/ Thinking Skills – Flowers are a fun natural object for children to count, match, classify and observe likes and differences.
Creative Skills – Flowers are a simple beginning form to observe and duplicate with crayons, paints, scissors, paper and glue.
Language Skills – While observing flowers children can be introduced to color words, size words, texture words, opposites, etc.
Dramatic Skills – The growth cycle of a flower is a great beginning dramatization for a young child. Imagining themselves as a seed, then a bud, then a flower and finally a seed again allows children the opportunity to really understand the essence of a flower.
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DISCOVERING FLOWERS
Plan an excursion to your local nursery and let the learning begin. |
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Help your children identify common flowers by their names. How do you suppose snapdragons got their name, etc? |
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Pick a color and go on a color hunt around the nursery. |
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Look for short flower plants, then tall flower plants, skinny plants, and wide plants, etc. |
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PLANTING FLOWERS |
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Let your child help you plant some easy flowers such as marigolds or nasturtiums. |
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Encourage your child to tend the flowers by watering and weeding them. |
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Nothing is more rewarding to your preschooler than to see plants actually growing up through the soil. |
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When their flowers are in full bloom, let your children pick some and examine their parts, count their leaves or petals and look for seeds.
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THE LIFE CYCLE OF A FLOWER
Children can learn a lot about life from observing the life cycle of flowers.
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Buds open |
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Flowers bloom |
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Seeds are made |
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Flowers die |
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Seeds fall |
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New plants form |
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THE NOSE KNOWS
Children love doing experiments with flowers. Here is a simple smelling test.
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Place 3-4 flowers with distinctive smells into small containers. |
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Have your children close their eyes and sniff the contents of each container and try to tell you the name of the flower by identifying its smell. |
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Explain to your children that cologne and perfume are made from flowers. |
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Let your children smell three different flowers. |
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Then spray a cologne with the fragrance of one of the flowers. |
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Have your children identify through it’s smell which flower the cologne is made from. |
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ADDITIONAL FLOWER ACTIVITIES
Flower activities can be found at these other Stations.
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Flower Songs – Music Station |
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Flower Art – Art Station |
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Flower Unit – Theme Station |
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