Spring is here, and with spring comes one of my favorite teaching materials — FLOWERS! I love the seasonality of flowers as well as how they can be used in almost every subject area of the classroom, so I finally put together 7 different Montessori-inspired activities using flowers. You can use the same bouquet of flowers for each of these activities over its lifespan — start with the flower arranging, then use them for the other activities once they don’t look too great in the vase anymore.

Flower arranging is a Montessori practical life activity that my kids will use forever. For young toddlers, just give them some flowers that have already been cut to size, an empty vase, and a pitcher of water. After your child pours the water in and arranges the flowers in the vase, she can choose where the arrangement should go in your house! For older children, don’t pre-cut the flowers, but instead offer a pair of scissors so your child can cut them to the appropriate length.

Older children can do still life painting with the finished arrangements! We like to do this with watercolors, but you could also use acrylic paint, pastels, or colored pencils to recreate the flower arrangements on paper.

You can use your color tablets to match the colors found in your flowers! In this picture, we were using photographs of flowers — but you could easily do this same activity with real flowers.

Another fun practical life/fine motor activity using flowers is petal plucking! Put some flowers on a tray with a pair of tweezers and let your child pluck off each petal one at a time. Those petals can then be used in some of the other works below!

Plucked flower petals and leaves make great materials for collage work! Just pair with a gluestick or some paste and a sheet of paper, then let your child create a nature collage.

It’s also fun to use plucked petals and leaves in nature sensory bottles! Put them in some clear containers with water and other bits of nature objects and watch them float around as you turn the bottles upside down and back again.

Dissecting and labeling the parts of a flower is a great way to use up those flowers once they’re past their peak. I always like to use real objects whenever we’re using “Parts of a….” cards, and there’s nothing better than being able to see inside a real flower to label all of those tiny parts.

Happy spring!

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