DIY: Funky florals

Make a beautiful and silly bouquet of flowers out of coloured pipe cleaners

Difficulty rating ✱✱✱ Time to prepare ✱ Cleaning up ✱

Activity time: It will depend on the amount of flowers that you want to create. It will also depend on the age of your child. If you need to assist them more, it will take them longer. It will take approximately a minute to make one flower.

This activity will encourage your child to be creative and to use her imagination. It will also develop your toddler’s hand- eye coordination, and her fine motor skills will get a workout. Show older children how to do it, and offer assistance when they ask for it. Children of three years or younger will need assistance throughout the activity.

YOU WILL NEED:

Approximately 100 pipe cleaners for this activity. Buy a batch with different colours and even textures.

1. Use one pipe cleaner to create a circle for the centre of your flower.

2. Working around the centre, create petals for your flower with a second pipe cleaner. First wind the one side of the pipe cleaner onto the circle. Now create a petal by making a half moon shape on the outside of the circle. Wind it onto the circle again before repeating three of four times. You can use more than one pipe cleaner to create even more and bigger petals. Just use the same colour.

3. Use a different coloured pipe cleaner and connect it to the bottom of the flower to create a curved or straight stem. YB