This simple organic spring sensory play idea highlights the joy of the season.
Has spring arrived where you live yet? I love seeing blossoms on trees. Then they fall to the ground and it looks like snow. It’s the closest thing to snow you’ll find here in Silicon Valley! The sidewalks near our condo were covered with blossoms. Three-year-old Anna and I took a bowl out and scooped a bunch in for fun and easy spring sensory play.
Some links on this site are affiliate links and I may earn a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you! Learn more.
Easy Spring Sensory Play Idea
Anna surprised me by searching through the blossoms to find the stems, with stamen (those are the little things sticking up) and sepals (those are the leaf-like things at the top of the stem) still attached. Her excitement over these flower stems made me want to get her a Montessori Flower Puzzle, but I actually think this DIY felt flower parts puzzle (or paper puzzle – you could just print out the templates without then cutting them out of felt) is better. I wanted to find a nice book about the different parts of the flower. The Magic School Bus Plants Seeds: A Book About How Living Things Grow is a great companion book for this activity – do you know of any others that you recommend?
Anna played and played with the petal-free flowers, making them into imaginary bridal bouquets and laying them out to count.
It doesn’t get much better than nature-created sensory play items that double as math manipulatives!
Once she had exhausted the potential she saw in the stems, Anna finally turned to the flower petals, which she also thoroughly enjoyed:
I took a short video so you could see some of this play in action:
Crafts on Sea has a great round-up of more sensory play with flowers ideas!
What spring sensory play ideas are your kids enjoying? We are finally getting some rain after a long drought, and the kids LOVE playing outside in the rain. They collect rain in containers and splash in puddles. We even have a rain gauge that my eight-year-old son made.
Share comments and feedback below, on my Facebook page, or by tagging me on Instagram. Sign up for my newsletter to receive book recommendations, crafts, activities, and parenting tips in your inbox every week.
MaryAnne is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.
Sensory activities are almost always a no fail activity. It opens the door for free play. It lets the kids explore a material. And its just fun!
What a lovely play idea from Anna and Mother Nature!
Oh, I have a great book on how seeds move around, but I’m not remembering the title offhand. I’d have to look it up. I can visualize the cover, and the illustrations, but not clearly enough to tell you the title.
Let me know when you think of it?
We definitely love this time of the year with flowers and rain showers, but we start missing the sun just a little bit :)
I guess we aren’t Californian enough yet, because it still feels to me as if we are seeing the sun quite a bit…
How clever of Johnny to make a rain gauge! The images in this post are stunning. Sadly, I got an error message when I tried to watch the video. Nature inspires in so many ways!!!
How strange! The video works for me.
I had a lot of fun capturing this moment on film :)