I got the idea for this game while talking with a friend about creative, DIY, educational games for kids.
This game involves flash cards, plastic flowers, and a ‘garden’ or ‘flower box.’ Children create ‘bouquets’ by gathering flowers from a garden box based on information found on their chosen flash cards.
Most of the materials for this can be found in any kind of dollar,discount, or party store, so it’s pretty cheap to put together. You can also make all of these components if you’d rather do it that way.
Here’s what you’ll need:
2 sets of flash cards- one with numbers, and another with a colored flower on each card.
a bunch of different colored plastic (or paper if your kid won’t rip them apart) flowers that are the same colors as the flowers in the flash cards.
a box filled with floral foam to create the ‘garden’ that holds the flowers.
a basket or vessel of your choice to hold the finished ‘bouquet’
How to play:
First, build a garden with all of the flowers. This does not have to be fancy at all! Or it can be if you want, whatever blows your hair back.
Next, place the flash cards in two separate piles-one with numbers and one with the pictures of colored flowers.
Have your child choose one card from each pile. Then, have them start to make you a ‘bouquet’ of flowers with the amount of and color of flower they picked from the flash cards.
So, if they picked the number 5 and a picture of red flowers, they would collect 5 red flowers from the garden box and add them to the basket or vase.
If the next cards are the number 2 and a picture of yellow flowers, they would take 2 yellow flowers from the garden box and add it to the bouquet.
Continue until they fill the basket or vase and viola! A super fun way to practice counting and learning colors.
Secret added benefit: you may be subconsciously teaching your children to bring you flowers, muuuaaaahhhhh!
Fun idea!