How to Expand it?

• What other ways can you think of to display your flowers?
• Make a flower look like a flower you’ve seen before or a flower in your yard.
• Draw, paint, or add an insect to your flower, such as a bee or butterfly.
• Try making paper flowers or running your own flower shop

What Kids Learn:

• Fine motor skills. Kids practice using the small muscles in their hands later used for writing.
• Symbolic thinking, or the ability to think about one thing representing something else. When small children begin to connect a paper flower to the flowers they see in the yard, they start building the connections in the brain that allow for reading and learning later.
• The purpose of a stem! Stems support the leaves and the flower petals which help keep them in the sunlight. The stems also store nutrients and transport fluids from the roots to keep the flower alive. 
• Why are flower petals colorful? Flower petals are colorful because the color attracts birds, bees and other insects. The insects land in the flower and spread pollen, which helps fertilize the flowers and create seeds which will then make more flowers!
• Vocabulary:
  • Anther: Oval shaped structure which holds the pollen.
  • Filament: Tube like shape which holds the anther upright for pollinators such as bees and butterflies.

Ways to expand it:

• Set up several different bouquets and arrangements and create a pretend floral shop! Have your family visit your shop and buy flowers or place orders for special occasions. Assign prices, take payments and fulfill orders.

What kids learn:

• Children gain social and emotional skills through dramatic play. When they pretend, they are experimenting in social roles, practicing language, and solving problems.
• Fine motor skills. Kids practice using the small muscles in their hands later used for writing.
• Experimentation! When kids experiment, they're learning how to learn. Failure is an important part of experimenting, so let kids try things that won’t work. It’s how they figure things out!

Vocabulary:

• Complementary colors:  Colors that are on opposite sides of the color wheel. For example, yellow and purple, blue and orange, red and green. Complementary colors contrast each other and tend to look more bright and vivid when placed next to each other. Mixing complementary colors in a floral arrangement will create a bright, vivid arrangement that pops!
• Tertiary colors: Colors that are next to each other on the color wheel. For example, orange and yellow, blue and green, red and purple. Tertiary colors match each other and are often found together in nature. They usually match well and create serene and comfortable designs. Mixing tertiary colors in a floral arrangement will create a calm, serene design that is pleasing to the eye.

The Color Wheel

How to Expand it:

• Are leaves only green? Try using different colors for your leaves.
• Fold, cut, or bend your roll to make a different leaf shape.
• What other objects can you use to create a leaf shape on your artwork?

What Kids Learn:

• Spring has just begun! Leaves are starting to grow back on the trees. What signs can you see that spring is starting?
• Kids can learn how leaves use the process of photosynthesis for food and how sunlight helps trees grow. Add painting or drawing of the sun on your page to give your tree some food!
• Symbolic thinking, or the ability to think about one thing representing something else. When small children begin to connect a tree on paper to the tree on their street, they start building the connections in the brain that allow for reading and learning later.
• Science vocabulary:
  • Leaf: a flattened structure of a higher plant, typically green and blade-like, that is attached to a stem directly or via a stalk. Leaves are the way trees absorb sunlight and breathe.
  • Spring: the season after winter and before summer, in which vegetation begins to appear.
  • Photosynthesis: How plants eat! The process plants use to take energy from the sun and convert, or change it, into the energy they need to grow.

How to Expand it:

• Once dry, use markers to outline your different materials on top of your painting to add more circles, or create a new design on top of your circles.
• Try to count how many circles end up on the page.
• See if you can make other shapes when adding circles together, or if overlapping circles create new shapes.

What do kids learn?

• Spatial or visual thinking. Being able to imagine the positions of objects and how they interact is an important skill for learning math. Putting an object in paint and seeing how that object contacts the paper is a great way to develop spatial thinking skills.
• Fine motor skills. Kids practice using the small muscles in their hands later used for writing.
• Art can be made with unconventional materials. You don’t need a paintbrush to paint! Using diverse materials for art encourages creativity and imagination.
• Art Vocabulary:
  • Geometric shape - a circle is a geometric shape that is made by drawing a curve that always has the same distance from the point at the middle.