When I was at Primary School, ‘Calf club’ day was always my favourite annual event. Many rural schools in NZ still have yearly calf club days (an idea that dates from the 1920’s) where children rear calves and lambs at home and then bring them into school to be judged. The whole community gets involved, and there are often gardening and cooking competitions as well flower arranging and craft based events…
My favourite activities as a child were always centered around the flowers. On flower arranging day, the whole class would lug buckets of flowers picked from their home gardens into the classroom (a motley selection of flowers ranging from beautiful weeds and bedraggled daisies, to hotly prized roses and fancy tropical blooms). As well as the obligatory flower arrangements in recycled glass jars, our class usually also attempted:
- Vaseline sticky saucers (a thin layer of vaseline/petroleum jelly is smoothed over an old saucer, then you carefully pull apart your flowers and ‘stick’ the petals onto your saucer in a pattern (top points for symmetry and uncrumpled petals)
- Little button hole arrangements (stems wrapped in tinfoil with retro looking ferns as a backing)
- Flower globes (your best flower – normally a rose – would have its short stem blue-taced or plasticined firmly onto the inside of a jar lid, You’d then carefully submerge your jar and flower-lid into a bucket of water and attempt to screw the lid on while keeping the flower uncrumpled and pristine! Top points went to jars without air bubbles in them)
- Sand saucers (You’d carefully smooth and compact a mound of wet sand over an old saucer, trim your flower stems short, and then carefully arrange your flowers in a symmetrical pattern by pushing the stems into the sand (top points for an eye catching design and no sand showing)
These are all awesome low cost activities that kids of all abilities love…. even my little toddler enjoys poking flowers into sand! Check out my Flower Power pack below for lots of other hands-on activities perfect for celebrating and learning about flowers.
HAPPY SPRING EVERYONE! (apologies all you Autumny-northern-hemispherers)
Grubbily yours,
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