This spring, while we were scrambling to figure out what School-from-home would look like, E8, E5 and I took a lot of walks and frequently brought home flowers and leaves to press, talk about, and use in art.
One of the kids’ favorite things to do with the pressed flowers is making bookmarks. To make them, we’d take a piece of packing tape, lay it on the table sticky side up, put the flowers on it, then flip it over onto a piece of white paper. It was a quick and gratifying craft, and they had a lot of fun making them to mail off to friends and families.
They also started to figure out which plants were best for pressing, and which had too much moisture to come out looking pretty. It is great watching them adjust their choices as they learn.
If you’re looking for a flower press, I’d suggest something different than the one we have–ours does the job, but as you cinch the straps tight, the pieces in between, which are all loose, slide out of place if you’re not using a knee to hold them in place. It was frustrating for me to operate, and I can only imagine would be really tough for kids to use. I’d suggest one more like this that closes with a twisting–the kids can operate it themselves (of if you’re doing it you won’t be like me, wishing i had more limbs 😉 .
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