For Valentine’s Day my husband always gets me a beautiful bouquet of flowers (your resident florist similar to ones near Florist Cabrini Hospital will always have fresh ones for you) I adore flowers and I love admiring them on my table, but around this time each year I usually end up searching Google for “How to extend the life of my flowers”. However, this year I decided not to do that. I would let the flowers live as long as they could in the beautiful vase on the table, then I would use them for some toddler exploration.

Well,  my beautiful bouquet didn’t last very long (I think my toddler climbing on the table and ripping some of the flowers out had something to do with that!) so I had a little head start on finding ways to use the wilting petals for his play time.

In no particular order, here are some ways I came up with to use my Valentine’s day bouquet in play:


1. Use the petals for a sensory exploration

 
 
Both my boys were able to participate in this exploration. They enjoyed feeling the texture of different petals and smelling each of them as well. This eventually turned into a flower petal rainstorm and burying our toes in the petals. I’m sure your kids will think of many more ways to have fun with them 🙂

 
2. Turn the flowers into paintbrushes

Deborah from Teach Preschool had her students use flowers as paintbrushes!

http://www.teachpreschool.org/2011/05/painting-with-a-bouquet-of-flowers-in-preschool/
 
Doesn’t that look like a great way to paint? The kids could make flower prints or just run the petals along the paper to make interesting art!
 
 
3. Mix  the petals with play dough
 

We used a homemade version of playdough with rose petals mixed in. Cannon played with this for a full HOUR. I kid you not- he loved this activity!

4. Make a flower petal sun catcher

Mess for Less took up her husband’s challenge of reusing her Valentine’s bouquet and she came up with the idea of making a flower petal sun catcher.

http://www.messforless.net/2012/02/reusing-valentines-flowers.html

 What an easy (and beautiful) way for toddler’s to make art!

5. Add flower petals to water to create an  interesting “Scoop and Pour” activity

This was another activity my son really enjoyed. I had a small strainer that I bought at the dollar store which he used as a scooper. I put various flower petals into a container of  water (with blue food coloring added for interest) and let him scoop the petals out. He did get a little frustrated when smaller petals stuck in the strainer, but all in all this was an easy activity to set up and let him enjoy 🙂
It was a challenge to come up with five ways to use my flowers, but if creativity is a trait I want my kids to display, than I need to be creative myself 🙂
After all these activities, I still have quite a bit of my bouquet left and am thinking of more ways I could use it. Hoping I could come up with five more ways to use flowers in play, but if not, at least I have these activities to use again! I’d love to hear your ideas on how to use flowers in play- or if you have a blog post about an activity you did with flowers, please leave a link in the comments below- I’d love to check it out! Thanks for visiting!

3 thoughts on “5 Ways to use Flowers after Valentine’s Day”

  1. What a cute idea for the boys! I love how you took something as simple as flowers and used to to help your children grow. Thank you for sharing!

  2. I bet the petals mixed with the paint made for some interesting art! It’s great that you could recycle the flowers through a number of fun activities. Great post!

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