This post may contain affiliate links. If you choose to make a purchase through these links, I earn a small commission at no cost to you. I do not promote anything I do not believe in or stand behind.
Spring signals flowers blooming and time for gardening. This is one of my favorite themes to do with my toddler and preschooler at home. I love talking about flowers and taking walks with the kids to see all the colorful flowers blooming.
I wanted to share with you the flower themed activities we’ve done while at home in hopes of giving you some ideas to do with your own little ones. Each activity is easy and inexpensive to set up! Your toddler and preschooler will build vocabulary and have fun learning all about planting flowers with each activity.
All of these activities are ones we do alongside our favorite books about flowers and gardening. If you are looking for some spring titles to check out at the library or add to your home library, be sure to check out my post outlining 32 of our favorite books about bugs and butterflies, flowers and planting gardens, and the spring weather and change of seasons. You’ll find 10 books about flowers and planting gardens that will be wonderful to read while engaging in the following flower themed activities!
F is for Flower Printable Activities
Whenever we do a specific theme during our at-home preschool time, I focus on several letters and letter sounds. For our flower theme, we focused on F.
When my daughter was first learning her letters, cutting and gluing pictures that started with each letter and gluing them onto the letter shape was a favorite activity for her. My daughter even practiced cutting straight lines. We also used a set of foam flower stickers and my daughter preferred to cover the uppercase F in those rather than cut out the flowers. She practiced her fine motor by peeling the paper off the back of each sticker and pushing the stickers onto the letter. The point of the activity was to focus on the letter shape and sound. Using stickers or pictures creates a visual connection to the letter.
The flower-themed printable activities we did together included counting flowers and matching them to a number from 1-5, practicing patterns with flowers, measuring the height of flowers and ordering them by size and labeling a picture of a flower with the parts. Each activity was short, simple and perfect for my preschooler’s attention span.
This set of printable flower activities is available for you to download for free and use with your little learners. Just click on the image below to grab this free set of printable activities. Plus, get access to my entire resource library of printables to make your life easier and engage your little ones in learning activities at home.
Plant A Garden Sensory Bin
My toddler and preschooler love playing with sensory bins. Scooping, pouring, filling containers and just playing with the items I “hide” inside is always a hit, especially on rainy days! The main reason why I love sensory bins is that they can be played with multiple ages of children. My toddler and preschooler can enjoy them together. What changes is the type of activity inside of it. For example, my preschooler would find letters to match to pictures for beginning sounds and my toddler would focus on matching colors and shapes.
When my preschooler saw the gardening sensory bin set up, she was eager to play with it. It was sooo easy (and inexpensive) to set up and my preschooler loved pretending to plant flowers. My toddler enjoyed filling the flower pot and then pouring it out.
All you need is a clear plastic container, dried black beans (soil/dirt), small plastic flower pots or cups, silk flowers and shovels. I also threw in some packets from old flower seeds. All of the materials except the plastic container, can be found at the Dollar Store. If you can’t find the flower pots at the Dollar Store, here is a colorful set perfect for your gardening sensory bin!
First, I emptied 4 bags of dried black beans into the plastic container. Then I set in 4 plastic flower pots, the silk flowers, packets of flower seeds, shovels and a small rake.
I had trouble finding gardening shovels for kids so I just looked through our beach toys for two shovels. I found plenty of children’s gardening sets, but we didn’t need all of the other items that came with it as we already had them. We have so many small beach shovels so I was happy to repurpose what we already had! These sand scoop plastic shovels would actually be perfect, too!
For the packets of flower seeds, I covered them in clear packing tape to make them more durable and less likely to rip.
My preschooler and toddler were so excited to plant flowers. This sensory bin was great for them because it encouraged a lot of conversation about the steps we take to plant flowers, it expanded their language and vocabulary as we talked about the names of the tools and other items inside the sensory bin and worked on motor skills.
My toddler was using the shovel to scoop and lift the beans and then dump them into the flower pot. He lifted the flower pot with both hands and poured the beans into another flower pot. He did this over and over and over again.
I loved that both of my kids were enjoying this bin together, but focusing on different things at the same time. I am constantly finding ways for my toddler and preschooler to learn and play together and sensory bins are perfect for that 😄
We actually had two sensory bins set up. One of them was planting a garden and using the dried black beans as I described previously. The other one was filled with green crinkle paper basket filler. Inside this sensory bin, I placed laminated pictures of items you need when planting a garden and laminated pictures of flowers.
First we found all of the pictures and matched them. I provided my toddler and preschooler with a laminated picture of what was inside the sensory bin. They placed the pictures on top as they found each one. Once every picture had a match, they knew all of the pictures were found.
Then we looked at the pictures of the gardening items and sequenced them using a sorting mat. This invited a lot of conversation about how to plant a garden.
After that we ordered the flowers found in the sensory bin by size. We measured the height using water drops. We ordered them from shortest to tallest.
If these sensory bin activities sound like something your little learners would enjoy, click on the image below to learn more about the Garden-Themed Sensory Bin Play & Learn Set for Preschoolers. It includes all of the printable activities I described above so you can engage in these fun sensory bin activities with your little ones, too!
Handprint Flowers
Mother’s Day aligned with our flower theme, which is perfect! So we did a handprint painting for the grandmothers. We picked three colors. I painted my preschoolers hand first. I used a baby wipe in between each color. Then she used a paintbrush to add a flower stem and leaves. I repeated the process with my toddler. They both love doing handprint paintings and I think it made the perfect Mother’s Day card for the grandmothers.
Flower Garden Painting
We completed a flower garden painting to go along with our theme. This painting involved following a series of steps to complete. Mixing colors was part of the process, too! This painting project was simple and fun to do together. We practiced drawing circles and lines with paint and a paintbrush and learned how we can create different shades of a color when adding white to red, yellow, orange, green and blue paint. Once the paintings were dry, I framed them and displayed them in our home.
Check out my post on how to paint a simple flower garden painting with your toddler and preschooler for more details about the materials we used, the steps we took to complete the project and what we did with the finished artwork. You can also click on the image below to learn more about this Flower Garden Painting 😉
Plant Flowers
Of course a flower theme is not complete without planting flowers in our backyard! My kids and I took a trip to a local nursery to pick out flowers. We picked out pretty pansies in hanging baskets for the front of our house and several plants for our pots in the backyard. My preschooler loved looking at all of the flowers and she probably wanted every single one for our house! When we got home, my kids helped me plant the flowers. They loved wearing their gardening gloves and using the gardening tools to scoop the soil and water the flowers after we planted them. Each day, they help me water the flowers. Watching them grow is fun for my kids! I love how much color the flowers bring to our yard. It honestly is one of my favorite parts about spring and I am happy to involve my little ones in the process.
Coloring and Painting Pictures of Flowers
You can find a lot of pretty flower coloring pages on the Internet. Coloring is a favorite activity in our house and we engage in it a lot 🤩 To be honest, whenever my preschooler wants to color, I join her in the fun! Coloring as an adult is a great stress reliever 😉 The dishes and laundry can wait!
My preschooler loves color by number and color by letter pictures, too! Here is a fun color by number picture of a flower your preschooler can complete! Color by number and color by letter pictures are great for number/letter recognition, following directions and practicing hand-eye coordination 😉
My kids painted a picture of a vase with flowers inside. I printed it on white cardstock, which makes it perfect for using watercolors. My preschooler enjoyed painting rainbow flowers. Our watercolor paint set has so many colors to choose from so she loves it!
My toddler switched from using watercolor paint to dot markers. He preferred to dip the paintbrush in the water rather than the paint. But he loves his dot markers so I had him put a dot of color on each flower petal. We gave the finished paintings to the grandmothers for Mother’s Day 😍
The picture they painted is part of a Mother’s Day set of coloring pages in our resource library. Click on the image below for your free printable set of Mother’s Day Coloring Pages. If you signed up previously for access to our resource library, check your email inbox for the password.
Conclusion
All of the activities in this post are easy ways to engage your toddler and preschooler in flower-themed learning for spring. Each one requires minimal supplies, is inexpensive (or free) to set up and helps you nurture your little ones as you explore the beauty of spring together!
Which activity are you most excited to try with your little ones? Share with me in the comments below!
Related Posts
