Beautiful garden of make-believe!

Today, I went back to my childhood for something fun to do with the kids! They were pretending all morning to own stores, so I thought why not make a fun prop that they can pretend to sell? Since it is summertime we decided they could have a flower shop and make some flowers! They were very excited since the older ones could do this craft mostly on their own with some assistance here or there to get started. Best part, if they got ruined it didn’t matter since they are so cheap and easy to make!

You need:

Six sheets of tissue paper
One pipe cleaner
Tape
Scissors
Pen

Start by having the kids each pick out six sheets of tissue paper and stack them on top of each other. Next, accordion folds the tissue paper. This part can be hard for little hands so they may need some help. Make sure each fold is crisp so have them run their hands along the fold while slightly pressing down to make sure that it’s crisp.

Once, the entire sheet is folded you can either fold it in half or just find the middle of the now folded up paper. Take the pipe cleaner and fold it in half. Place the paper in the middle of the two ends of the pipe cleaner. Make sure the pipe cleaner is in the middle where the paper is folded in half or just the middle of the paper. Twist the pip cleaner securely, but not so tight that it rips the paper. Twist the pipe cleaner all the way down to its ends for the stem of the flower.

This next step is optional. If you would like you can cut the tissue paper ends so they are wavy, rounded, or pointed, whichever you want for your flower. You can also choose not to cut the ends of the flower and it will still look great. If you do cut the ends you can use the pieces cut off to make leaves on the stem by taping them to the pipe cleaner. If you’re pretending to have a flower shop you can use the scraps as fake money by cutting them into circles and rectangles and writing numbers on them.

On each side of the divided tissue paper, pull apart the tissue paper separating each sheet. When you are doing this pull the top sheet upward continuing to do so with the sheet below it until you’re at the last sheet. Tape the ends of the bottom sheet of tissue paper together to keep the flower formed! Admire your beautiful flower!

Make as many as you want for your store or garden. Cut the tops off of some empty milk containers for buckets or vases for the flowers, have the kids paint or glue things on the containers for additional fun. If you want you can reference an earlier post of mine and make butterflies to go on the flowers and tape them on for added garden fun! Use them to decorate a stroller or wagon for a special walk; maybe even let them decorate a crib or the headboard of a bed. Be creative and enjoy watching your children’s garden grow with creativity! To close, children are like flowers, they have seasons where they grow and we aren’t able to see it and seasons where their blooms display their growth. The important thing to remember is that even if we don’t see it they are always growing and we should admire them even when the “blooms” aren’t seen.

Abby