It has been years since I have pressed any flowers, probably not since I was Freya’s age and I ran up and down the Boulevard we grew up on collecting cherry blossom to make gifts from.
When I fell and hurt my foot Freya collected me a tiny bouquet of wold flowers. As a rule, we don’t pick anything as we try to encourage the children to watch the flowers etc. in nature rather than bring them into the house. But given the sentiment here, I was delighted to received them.
Rather than try to keep them alive in water, in a caravan, with a toddler around, (seemed like a recipe for disaster) I put them between two sheets of kitchen role and pressed them in one of the girls’ books under the mattress of our bed, (read here also sofa /dining room).
Once they were well and truly dry and flat, on an overcast afternoon when an additional activity was called for, I whipped them out much to the girls’ surprise. I didn’t prescribe what they should do with them, just said we could make things.
Flossy created a beautiful bookmark with a pressed flower on one side and an illustration on the other with some independent writing on it, while Freya created little characters with hers as collages.
While I won’t be encouraging them to pick more flowers, we can certainly collect and we see and repeat the activity – they loved in and the outcomes were so beautiful.
