We are continuing with the Children’s Art Week theme of nature and trying out some flower patterns. If you have older children then DCA have put up an activity for making nature inspired wallpaper here but this is a slightly simpler version for little ones. It’s a really nice way to connect little ones to nature through something creative and explore colours, textures and shapes. You will need to start by exploring the garden or a local green space to collect some interesting flowers and leaves. Make sure you have permission to pick and if wee ones are still putting things in their mouths make sure plants are non toxic. Good edible flowers are rose petals, pansies or violas, borage or calendula but always be careful and if you are not sure give it a miss. You could chat with wee ones about how you just take one flower from each plant so that the plant will still be happy to introduce some thinking about the environment. Talk about how the different plants feel, look and smell.
When you get home get wee ones to help you spread all the finds out and you could see if they can play at sorting them into colours or size or into number of petals if they are big enough. Then give them some paper and let them experiment with making patterns. If they are small they might want to lay out their favourites but toddlers might start making repeat patterns or trying some symmetry. You could demonstrate some patterns yourself.
These are transitory art works but if you would like to keep them, take a photo or you could try pressing the flowers. To do this put another sheet of paper on top and put them in the pages of a book with lots more heavy books on top. After a week or so flowers should be pressed and could be glued down to keep or put onto cards. Or you could use the flowers in our ice stained glass activity here.