“Orientation Day”
Welcome to our “Fun with Flower Power! – An Amazing DIY Plants Camp Week” series. For Day 1, we kept this very light and focused more on introducing the concept for the week with fun crafts, experiments, and food crafts / snacks. Read through to check out some ideas.
MAKING “NAME TAGS”
For Day 1 of our Fun with Flower Power Camp, we started off with creating ‘name tags’, to get kids in the summer camp mood. While this isn’t really necessary (as it was just a DIY At Home Camp), it’s a fun little activity and gives younger kids practice on writing their names. We had our kids decorate their tags with flowers & plants along with writing out their name While we purchased Bright Badge Holders & used regular paper for the inserts, you could also use some card stock and thread through ribbon or yarn to create one of your own.
WEEKLONG PROJECT
On the first day of the week, we introduce the topic as well as giving them a relatively easy weeklong project. For this weeklong project, we used a small notebook and asked our kids to record and draw flowers they saw on their daily walk./outing When they got back home, they would have to find out what those flowers were and write a few facts about them. (In full honesty 🙂 we had to use Google Lens to find out what some of these flowers were as we’re not flower experts… learning opportunity for all! haha!)
DECORATE THE CAMP AREA
On the first day of the week, we also decorate the camp area with crafts and projects. For this week, we made “Flower Beds” using a large flat package box as the container and created flowers out of tissue. We did purchase a set of Hibiscus Centerpieces but also added to the “flower bed” with our own tissue flowers.
FOOD CRAFTS / SNACKS
For our snack craft of the day, we used carrots and cucumbers to make some veggie flowers as well as nectarines and berries to make fruit flowers. Honestly you can use any fruits, veggies, dry snacks you have in the house. Just arrange them in the shapes of flowers, petals, stems, and you have some edible flowers!
READING
It’s no secret that reading helps prevent that summer slide. Some even say this is the most important.
For our intro to camp day, we chose a site from kids.brittanica.com that explained what a Botanical Gardens and Arboretums are: Botanical Garden and Arboretum. It can be a bit lengthy & does have far more words than pictures, so you may need to read with them or for them if your kids are younger.
WRITING & WRITING PROMPTS
Just like reading, writing helps prevent that summer slide by both encouraging their creativity but also their motor skills and penmanship.
If you’ve got a little one, have them trace words related to the theme: PLANTS, FLOWERS, GARDEN
If you’ve got older children, have them write a sentence or two up to a page or two (depending on their age). Encourage them to be creative AND give reasons for why they made certain choices.
- If you could design your own botanical garden, what would it look like? What plants and flowers would it have?
STEM ACTIVITY
For our stem activity, we actually followed two similar experiments, one with real flowers and one made of paper.
- Color Changing Carnation Flowers. You might have heard of this experiment or done this in school. It involves some white carnations & food coloring (For our camp week, we actually could not find carnations and so tried with some white roses and other flowers). The daisies did pick up color overnight (images below) but the roses took much longer, so it’s best to do this one at the start of the week & let the kiddos keep checking day after day.
- Easy Two Step Coffee Filter Flowers for Spring Decorations. With just some food coloring and coffee filters, you can make some beautiful flowers! Since these were paper, once they dried, we planned on adding them to our “garden” in the camp area.
THANK YOU!!!
Thank you for checking out our at home play / summer camp guide! For more DIY At Home Camp days on this topic, check out the rest of the series: Fun with Flower Power! – An Amazing DIY Plants Camp Week. If you enjoyed this article, please let us know what you think in the comments below and/or follow us on Pinterest
Also, if you haven’t already, check out some of our other at home play / summer guides: DIY Summer Camps.
Happy Learning!
