Great-Grandmother visits once a year from California. We love it when she comes because we love family! This year the boys were old enough that we could actually make something for her that was nice and especially, made by them, not me from them!
I looked around a bit on the internet for ideas and saw several ideas for making flowers from egg cartons. Although I gleaned from these ideas, the end product isn’t necessarily like what I saw on any of the pages I just linked to (yes, there are 3 different ideas, so check them all out). We had two cardboard egg cartons to work with and no pompoms available. I sort of wanted to try using food coloring for the color, I’m not sure why, but it didn’t work very well.
First, after explaining to the boys the process of how we were going to create flowers, I cut out the bowl portions of the egg carton and poked a small hole in the bottom of each. Cutie Pie counted how many ‘flowers’ we had and counted out the same number of pipe cleaners to use as stems.
Then, I rounded the corners and tried to make each ‘flower’ a little different from the next. I thought about cutting each into petals, but working with a little 2-year-old made me hurry along and not do it, but next time I might try it.
Next, Cutie Pie and I placed each flower bottom into a puddle of watered down food coloring (placed in a cup of cupcake tin). While each soaked in its own color, we used eye droppers to drip different colors onto the petals. Unfortunately, the color didn’t soak in very quickly so the colors were pretty muted. This was a great science lesson reinforcing how colors combine to make new colors, though! Sweet Pea was really into this part of it and by the end, all of our flowers were a tint of brown. It was also a great fine-motor exercise for both boys!
Finally, after the flowers were dried on paper towels, Cutie Pie and Sweet Pea poked pipe cleaners through the holes (more fine-motor), bent them into funny shapes to hold them in the flower and stuck them all into a vase.
Here’s the end result, although, like I said the colors turned out muted, so they show up even less in the photo.
Next time I think I will try using straight food coloring or a bold paint. I also think making the stems green would make it look nicer, and might also play around with making actual petals. But, for working with a 2-year-old with a short attention span and wanting this to be a project made (almost) completely by the kiddos, I think this turned out great! Great-Grandmother loved them!
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