This week our yard is finally in full bloom. The kids have been absolutely fascinated with the different types flowers- they all look so different! This Parts of a Flower Cutting Tray was a fun scissor activity to work on my kids’ basic scissor skills while getting some hands-on exploration of flowers.
Before delving into this activity, we explored various books about flowers – both fiction and nonfiction. Some of the books we explored were:
Flowers (Plant Parts)Planting a RainbowNational Geographic Readers: Seed to PlantThe Magic School Bus Plants Seeds: A Book About How Living Things GrowTime For Kids: Plants! (Time for Kids Science Scoops)From Seed to Plant
Once the kids knew the basic terms and concepts of plants and flowers we got exploring!
Items Needed for a Flower Cutting Tray
- Kids Scissors (buy here)
- Wooden Tray (buy here)
- Loupe (buy here)
- Fine Motor Tweezers (buy here)
How to Teach Kids Scissor Skills
While scissors may seem pretty straightforward and easy, teaching kids how to use scissors is actually a complex task. In order to use scissors, kids must use skills in fine motor, hand-eye coordination, and bilateral coordination (using both sides of the body at the same time while each hand is performing different tasks). That’s a lot of moving parts to accomplish one cut. Because of the complexity behind working scissors, kids pick up scissor skills in stages.
Those stages are:
- Clip (or Fringe)
- Straight Line
- Zig Zag
- Curved (circle, hearts, wave)
While a cutting tray like this is fun for kids of multiple ages and stages, it is ideally aimed at children in the first four stages of scissor skills. If you want to do this activity with a child at a higher developmental stage I would focus more on the parts of the flower and less on the scissor skills.
Parts of a Flower Printables
Below you will find some free “Parts of Flowers” printables we were able to find online.
Parts of Flower Flip Book by 123Homeschool4Me
Learning About Plants by A Little Pinch of Perfect
Flowers Mini Pack by 3Dinosaurs
Early Childhood Botany Nomenclature Cards by The Helpful Garden
Flower Nomenclature – Montessori Printables by 1+1+1=1
My son’s absolute favorite part of this activity (besides digging in the flower bed) was getting to pull out the loupe to explore the flowers he cut. It took him a bit to figure it out. Once he got it though he was absolutely amazed.
Our loupe came in a kit that we got from Educational Insights, but it doesn’t have to be one designed specifically for kids to be fun.
I tried really hard to get a good photo for those of y’all that aren’t familiar with a loupe. It’s a pretty amazing little tool.
There is so much that can be done with this simple cutting tray activity. I hope your kids enjoy just as much as mine did!