DAISY CHAIN EDUCATION

Wouldn’t it be great to have an activity to do with your children that is always new, but reinforces learning skills with repetition? How about having a good reason to sit and relax while tying heart strings and making memories?

You can do all of this by making flower garlands and chains. If you have a son, tell him you are teaching him an important skill so that he can make his wife feel pretty one day. A daughter will feel like a princess with a crown upon her head.

For this project, you will need flowers with sturdy stems. Many wildflowers work well for this project, including asters, bachelor buttons, black-eyed Susan, chrysanthemum, daisies, dandelions, globe amaranth, marigolds, red clover, tithonia, and zinnias.

Practice counting skills as you collect 25 to 30 flowers. Once you have them in a bunch, let your child help you sort them into equal piles. Sort them by colors or size.

Other learning opportunities are identifying the plants and flowers. Which ones are edible? What are other uses? What are the parts of the flower? Where are the pistil (made up of the stigma, style and ovary) and the stamen? What are their functions? You get the idea.

Picking the flowers requires your child to use fine motor skills as he or she learns how to grasp the stem and pull firmly but gently. Reaching for the gently bobbing flower heads requires eye-hand coordination.

Sit together with your child and show him how you use your thumb nail to gently pierce the stem just below the flower’s head. Place the stem of a second flower through this hole. Then pierce a hole into the second flower’s stem, below the flower’s head. Let your child help place the third stem through the second flower’s stem. Again, you are developing fine motor coordination.

Continue this process until you’ve created a chain of flowers long enough to encircle your wrist, neck or head. On the last flower’s stem, make a slit long enough to allow the first flower’s head to slip through. Then you can knot the stem and either trim the ends of the remaining stems or braid them into the wreath.

Place the finished wreath upon your head or upon your child’s head and exclaim, “Won’t Daddy be so proud!”

When someone asks your child what you did that day, they might hear about how you taught them to wear flowers, make bracelets, or that you just sat outside and had fun. You’ll know that you practiced fine motor skills, while learning about botany, counting, color identification, sorting and how to sit still to see a task to completion. All of these are valuable learning tools that every child needs, but your child will gain them while hearing you teach him songs, tell him funny stories and wonder at God’s creation.

Page 224, THE VISION by Debi Pearl

"We lay there together, our heads close and our fingers intertwining. Her eyes sparkled with delight as she handed me a long-stemmed clover and ask me to teach her how to weave a crown for her head. . . . .
“She ran about picking clover to bring to me. I poked my thumb nail into the stems to make tiny holes in order to threaded another stem through it until I had made chains of red and white clover to wind around her head."

How To Make a Daisy Chain on Howcast