5 Super Cute Floral Activities To Do With Your Toddler!

1. flowers in a jar

This one is so beyond easy but it really gets them involved in the garden!! Just grab a clean, used jar in your pantry (let them choose their own if you want), and tell them to fill it up with flowers from the garden. Watch as they explore through all of the different parts of the garden finding cool and new different plants and flowers. You might be surprised by how excited they become when doing it! And you may need to steer them in the right direction and remind them of other parts of the garden they could explore, too. I know my girls get so caught up in one part of the garden they forget there’s so much more to check out! Then, once they’ve finished, they can set up their flower jar in a nice spot in the house, either in the kitchen, the dining table, their playroom or their bedroom. Even the bathroom would make a really nice spot too!

2. fairy soup

This one will really take their imagination to the next level! Even if your little one hasn’t gotten to that stage yet, it’s still a great sensory activity to try! It’s really similar to playing kitchens outside, and you can decide how far you want to go with it in terms of bringing out kitchen utensils to play with outside. Just tell your toddler there’s fairies living in the garden, and that it’s our job today to make them some fairy soup for lunch. Give your toddler a wooden bowl like these coconut bowls with wooden spoons, and ask him/her to go and fill it up with flowers and leaves from the garden - whatever they think the fairies would like. Then you can give them a spoon to mix it all up and top with water to make some soup! Leave it out for the fairies and during their nap, remove some of it and show them the fairies have eaten some of their soup - and must have thought it was delicious! You could take this further and make it a bit of a project by setting up a fairy garden outside, too like with this 48 piece set or this 19 piece set with fairies. Then it becomes a regular activity!

3. flower scoop

Grab an old tub you’re no longer using (or one you’re happy to use for outdoor play e.g. all the ones I’ve lost lids for I now use haha), fill it up with water, grab some ladles from the kitchen and set it up outside. Next, ask your toddler to go around the garden and pick some flowers and leaves and whatever else they like. We also have a lemon tree so we used lemons in ours as well (see below). Throw it all into the tub of water and watch as your toddler has endless fun scooping all the ingredients in your tub and playing with it using their hands! This is a favourite activity of ours on hot days too as it’s great for everyone to play in the shade while cooling down with the water by putting our hands in. We also love using the citrus squeezing tool to squeeze the lemons!

4. cardboard flower walk

Oh my gosh this one is an absolute FAVOURITE of mine!! Grab a piece of cardboard (I cut off sections from an old box), draw a cute vase with a texta to take up about half of the page, and then carefully make small holes above the vase on the top half of the picture. Then, either use flowers in the garden, or even better, give everyone their cardboard vases and get them out for a walk, and as you find flowers slowly add them one by one to the holes in your vase picture! It creates an almost real life looking vase of flowers! SOO cute and interactive while getting out for a walk! I’ll be honest there were hard times where we had to stop a lot and others wanted to run out in front to find more flowers but they get used to waiting and if you can let go of the actual walk and just focus on finding flowers, that’s when it can be a really enjoyable activity to all do together.

5. flower press

This one takes a bit of time (well, weeks to be exact) unless you use the microwave method which I've never donem so it might be a bit hard for your little one to get their head around it but - if you can, it can end up being soo nice. Ask your toddler to find some flowers in the garden that they love and collect them into a bucket. They could also pick leaves as well. Next, cut off 2 small sheets of baking paper, grab a thick book (preferably hard cover), and place the flowers and other pieces in between the 2 sheets of baking paper and sandwich them inside a page of the thick book. Then, use a string or elastic band to hold it together. Leave for about 2-3 weeks. This will press your flowers. Once they’re ready, you can take them out and use dots of glue on a piece of paper to create an artwork using your pressed flowers! So beautiful! If you have a toddler who’s particularly into craft, you could even go further by using this pressed flower frame and put it up in your little one’s room! It would also be perfect as a gift for a grandparent or an aunty, or daycare carers / teachers! There’s even kits like this Pressed Flower Art kit where you can make things like phone cases. So cute!!

If you found this helpful check out:

• 10 Christmas Gift Ideas For Dads Who Love To Cook

• 5 Super Easy Christmas Traditions With Kids!

3 years ago when my first baby was 1, I used to roll my eyes at other mums who talked about nature play. I’d think - what’s wrong with toys!? I get that they are mostly plastic and can be wasteful, but kids will be kids and toys are just part of life. Which yeah, I do still tend to agree with. However, I’ve noticed how easily bored my little ones get of their toys. If I’m honest, they get super bored of their plastic toys the easiest! I swear plastic toys are just like tik tok for kids - they get hooked quickly, and they get bored quickly too. I could be wrong but for my girls, those toys just don’t do the job of entertaining them very well. 

It could be an age thing, too. I’ve noticed as my now 4 and a half year old is getting so much more like a kid and losing that toddler vibe, she is a lot more interested in drawing, making things, and helping in the kitchen. In saying that, it’s actually also my 2 year old who has inspired me lately to get better at throwing some water in a tub and letting her play with her cars in the dirt outside so she can play “dirty cars” and wash them. She loves her wooden kitchen, too. And since it’s been spring, if I even mention anything about watering the garden or picking flowers, my girls both bolt out the door before I can finish my sentence.

Note: even if you don’t have a garden e.g. if you live in an apartment, you could do this by buying a simple bouquet of flowers e.g. from Woolworths, and use those!

So without further ado, here are our top favourite activities that involve flowers for toddlers (and young kids)! Since it’s been spring lately, our favourite thing to do has been going outside and doing all of these activities as our yard is just overrun with pretty flowers at the moment and - honestly it’s a vibe!

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