Don't throw away that dying old bunch of flowers!

Mamatomo Mama
May 16, 2018
3 min read

Flowers have so many more uses after they stop looking pretty on your kitchen table.

crafts activities with flowers real flowers necklace picture making

My husband came home with a lovely bunch of flowers last week and, once they started to wilt, we found FOUR separate activities that we could do using the dying flowers. In years gone by I would have just thrown the flowers away but my new 'lets not waste and lets try to find a use for everything' way of thinking has led me to this point. See below for what we did:

Threading a necklace with petals and stalks

I made a daisy chain necklace yesterday with felt and was inspired to use real flowers today with some of the dying flowers. We used one of the strongest stalks from the bunch of flowers and attached our thread with tape. I cut the stalk to a point as much as possible with scissors and we got threading. The leaves and petals were reasonably easy to thread but the more delicate flowers we threaded by making a small slit in the stalk of the flower with my fingernail.

My daughter had to learn how to be firm with the petals and leaves but also support them when she pushed the stalk through so that they didn't break. It was a great activity and she was super happy with the result!

Make pictures with flowers and leaves

This activity was easy. Flowers, glue, paper. Ready, steady, go! You can be as creative as you like. I let my kids freely create whatever they felt like. My daughter created a more natural picture while my son got out the pens and created an alien-filled intergalactic scene with action happening all around! This activity was really great because the rose petals were so soft and velvety. Pulling the flowers apart was a really great sensory experience. We had loads left over afterwards - which leads us to our next activity....

Rose petal bath

I tell you, my kids live like royalty. So here we were at 9am on a Sunday running them a rose petal bath! It was actually Mothers Day so if anyone were to be having a rose petal bath is should have been me but sometimes its more rewarding to let your kids have the experience..! They loved the rose petals. They filled them up into cups and pretended to make rose tea then had a competition to see who could get a hundred petals into their cup first (I think nobody actually succeeded in that goal!).

Flower cutting and sorting

I read recently that preschool age kids should be practicing using scissors as often as possible so this is a great activity. Kids usually only ever cut paper so it was new to cut something organic.

By yesterday more of the flowers were dying so I gathered a few together and set them out on a tray with some scissors and a box with four compartments. I did consider making it a sorting activity - into flowers and leaves, shapes, or colors - but in the end decided it might be interesting to see how my three year old decided to use the box. She actually ended up putting a little of everything into each section. She pulled the flowers apart and used scissors to cut up the stalks and leaves. The eucalyptus smelled amazing when my daughter pulled the leaves off the stem. Once we had pulled the flowers apart we looked at the individual petals. They were so pretty and it was funny that it took until we pulled them apart before we noticed how beautiful they were. This activity ended up feeling like a mini Forest School activity right there on our dining room floor! It was one of those activities that I have never considered doing and was so easy and so rewarding for both of us.