The weather is warming up, and a new season is on the horizon. Celebrate it with a spring busy bag! Not only does this awesomely easy idea keep your toddlers busy, but it also helps them to learn about parts of flower, flower life cycle, spring weather changes and more.
Flower Busy Bag Materials
To make this crafty kids’ creation you’ll need:
- Craft felt (find here: United States | Canada | United Kingdom)
- Scissors
- Marker
- Blue construction paper
- Small paper cups
- sealable bag to store pieces (find here: United States | Canada | United Kingdom)
Optional – you can also use to make and include inside a spring busy bag:
- a hole punch (find here: United States | Canada | United Kingdom)
- green pipe cleaners (find here: United States | Canada | United Kingdom)
How To Prepare the Spring Flower Busy Bag
Start by preparing felt sheets in spring colors and make sure to include green for flower stems and leaves. Some of the colors you might include are: pink, purple, blue, red and yellow.
Draw flower heads onto different felt colors. Your children can make a variety of sizes and shapes. They can make free-form bumpy or curved flowers. Or, they can make ovals and circles that they can piece together.
Cut the flower heads out. Older kids can do cutting by themselves but if you have a child under 3 year old, they might find it hard to cut felt. You can prepare it for them in advance.
Cut thin stems from the green craft felt. Your children can make long, slim rectangles. They can also cut green ovals, making leaves.
To make rain drops shred the blue paper into small pieces. Your children can either tear the paper or cut it. My kids prefer tearing. It’s definatelly more fun and it’s great hand strenghtening practice.
Create mock seeds. Cut brown or another earthy color of felt into small circles or ovals.
Pack up everything into a baggie!
Using Spring Flower Busy Bag
Now it’s time to make those flowers grow! Or, at least, make the flowers. Start with a seed.
Give your children the craft felt seed and the paper cup. They can fill the cup with ‘water’ (with the blue confetti that they cut from the paper).
Help your children to learn about the flower growing cycle by having them pretend to water the seed by pouring the blue paper on it.
Next, the seed can start to grow. Your children can create their own flower using the cut felt. They can put together a flower head, stem and leaves.
Encourage your child to get creative. Ask them to create patterns with different colored flowers or layer the flower heads, making new shapes. They can design their own spring garden or make a whimsical display of rainbow-hued plants!
Additional Idea – Create a Flower Life Cycle
You will need to cut an additional element – yellow sun out of craft felt.
Get into science and create a flower life cycle. Leave the seed and water on work surface. Add it next to the seed. Make a seedling (small-sized budding flower) to continue the life cycle. Finish it up with a full-grown flower.
Another idea: If you’re looking for even more fine motor fun, help your children to punch holes at the bottom of the flower head shapes. They can thread a pipe cleaner through each hole and twist it at the top to make bendable stems.
Read about Flower Life Cycle
We recommend adding reading to your child’s daily routine, followed up with an activity. For spring flower busy bag, they can learn and enjoy books about flower life cycle:
Explore the journey from seed to sapling and beyond. Children have lots of questions about the world around them, and this book helps them discover many amazing and wonderful scientific facts about nature. Find a book The amazing life cycle of plants by Kay Barnham here: United States | Canada | United Kingdom
Eric Carle’s classic story of the life cycle of a flower is told through the adventures of a tiny seed. This mini-book includes a piece of detachable seed-embedded paper housed on the inside front cover. Children can plant the entire piece of paper and watch as their very own tiny seeds grow into beautiful wildflowers. Find The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle here: United States | Canada | United Kingdom
What abilities can this flower-themed busy bag help your little learner build?
- Fine motor skills (such as eye-hand coordination, hand strenghtening and dexterity)
- Color recognition
- Math (geometry and patterns)
- Science (parts of the flower and spring weather changes)
- Problem-solving and critical-thinking skills
- Understanding part to whole relationship
Are you looking for more spring activities?
Check out these awesome spring ideas for toddlers and preschoolers:
- make a Spring Accordion Wreath from child’s artwork
- create and play in a Egg Carton Spring Flower Garden
- put together a fun Spring Sensory Bin
- use Watercolor Crayon Resist Painting to paint spring flowers
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