Activity |
Materials |
Instructions |
Educational Aspect |
Ikebana |
Vase, bottle, or bowls. Flowers, shrubs, sticks. Scissors or garden secateurs, flower frog (flat object with spikes sticking out. You can make one of these with hammer, nails and a piece of wood) |
Ikebana (E-kay-bah-nah) is the Japanese art of flower arranging. Go for a walk around a garden and pick items that appeal to you. Arrange them in a container. Here's a website to help: https://konmari.com/ikebana/ |
Artistic expression, flower/leaf identification, symmetry and asymmetry, culture. |
Flower pressing |
Flowers, leaves, paper (tissue, newspaper, coffee filters etc..), heavy books or iron or flower press or microwave. |
Go for a walk in a garden or forest or field. Pick flowers that appeal to you. Lay them out on a coffee filter. Place a coffee filter on top, then slip the "flower sandwich" into or under a heavy book. Change the filters every few days. Two-three weeks later, your flowers will be pressed. Remove them with tweezers. Mount on card or other. Here's a website to help: https://www.proflowers.com/blog/how-to-press-flowers |
Flower identification, desiccation, preservation |
Photo puzzles |
An outside area: garden, yard, park. Can also be modified for indoor photography. Cameras (phone, digital, tablet) |
The object of this exercise is to take photos of ordinary objects, but at angles different from normal. Others have to guess the object from the photo. I suggest setting a number (e.g. 10) for kids to aim at. After the photos are taken, you could have a family evening where everyone tries to guess. Points could accrue for any picture that is unguessed. |
Logical thinking, creative thinking. |