Sorting Parts of a Flower

Hello spring!! So we’ve been enjoying spring themed preschool activities around here (see our Nature Cutting Tray) when I was struck with inspiration to extend the activity for my kids- sorting the freshly dissected parts of a flower! This activity is a total two-for-one win because in preparing one activity, you can get another one out of it. Maybe even a third if you set aside flowers for this Invitation to Draw Spring Plants!

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So the first step in setting up this activity is to head over to our Nature Cutting Tray and set that up for your kids (or pin it to do later). Go ahead and click over there now…don’t worry, I’ll save your page for you right here until you’re ready to come back 😉

Done with that? Great! Hope it was a successful way to practice scissor skills with your munchkins! Now for the supplies for this activity:

Supplies:

• Three clear cups labeled “stems” leaves” and “petals”
• Parts of flowers
• Work tray

Since my kids can’t read phonetically yet, I set some examples in the cups for them before they started sorting (don’t be tempted to leave out the labels, though! That exposure to print is a rich source of literacy development in pre-reading kids!)

I encouraged my boys to sort the parts of the flowers while we talked about them. We looked at the different types of leaves there were, they pointed out caterpillar holes in some of the leaves, and smelled the different petals before sorting.

Remember when I said not to leave out the labels? That’s because the kids learn so much from a print-rich environment! The more print they are exposed to, the more they will start to recognize elements of print, like the fact that words carry meaning, we read left to right, words are made up of individual letters, etc. My four year old always asks me to read the labels while he points to them. He takes such pride in this pre-reading skill! You can add a little literacy or phonics into the activity by asking your kids what letter each word starts with, what it ends with, etc.

Isn’t it fantastic that we can give our kids rich hands-on learning activities quickly and easily without the use of worksheets? I have nothing against worksheets in general, but I just believe at the preschool level they should be used sparingly. If this post inspired you, I would love for you to follow along as I share more ideas from our home-preschool activities over on Instagram!

Pin this idea for later and share a photo with us when you complete it! Looking forward to connecting with you soon!