Flat Out Flora
My daughter received a gorgeous little wooden flower press for her third birthday and couldn’t wait to try it out. I hadn’t pressed leaves and flowers since I was a girl myself, and this activity certainly brought back memories.
Firstly we went out into the garden to collect leaves with interesting shapes. We don’t have a particularly floral garden, but we did manage to find a few flowery weeds as well! We had a lovely time together talking about similarities and differences between the leaves, comparing the colours and feeling the textures. With a full basket of greenery we headed back inside.
We carefully placed the leaves and flowers between layers of cardboard, and tightened up the screws on the flower press. (Of course, if you don’t have one you can press leaves using phone books or other heavy books. Use sheets of baking paper to protect your pages!) Then we just had to wait. Little Miss 3 was NOT impressed that she had to wait for a couple of weeks before we could do anything else!!
The wait did make it all the more exciting though when we finally unscrewed the press. I was glad we had spent some time talking about colour and texture, because the leaves had changed considerably. We decided to use the leaves and flowers to decorate cards. The first one was a disaster because the paper-thin leaves were so fragile and were difficult for my daughter to glue down. For our second attempt, she positioned her leaves on the card and I glued them in place. Much more successful!
This was a really rewarding activity and the finished cards are so sweet. Thanks Katie for the flower press!
We have that exact flower press. Thanks for reminding us to get it out and use it again. Wait until Spring! Our daughter made a whole book of pressed flowers last year, it was gorgeous.
@Sandra
I love how you tighten the little red ladybugs – so easy for small hands!
I guess for those of us going to give it ago for the first time could prepare some earlier on to show what the finished product would be like. A 3 week wait is not something that would go down well in our house either.
@Nicole
That’s a great idea. Mum puts leaves etc into the press ahead of time. Kids get to “open” the press and make cards/bookmarks/collages/whatever with the leaves. Then when finished, all go outside and collect things to refill the press for next time!
Beautiful cards! I love kid friendly crafty things that also make wonderful gifts.
We are not fans of waiting either. Actually, the last time we tried pressing leaves we forgot all about them until I went to look something up in the phone book a few months later!
I had a similar press when I was younger…I wonder what happened to it…
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