Clubhouse Flowers: Try, Fail, Adjust

We are working on special treats for Moms this week, and today we decided to pull a page right out of Parents Magazine and make some flowers from toilet paper rolls. I love making anything from toilet paper rolls since I never throw them away and we only have so much storage space for all of our soon to be upcycled materials.

The article, Recycled Blooms, in which they give you the details on this activity, simply gives you a list of what you need and a few very brief instructions. Then they post this picture as the end result:

I'm working with Preschoolers here and was expecting no such perfection. I mean, really, are they actually saying children cut those perfectly straight lines in the cardboard tubes? Even aside from those perfectly straight lines, that is one picture perfect paint job. I'm still trying to figure out how they did that.

Here's the Clubhouse Kids take on these flowers.

We cut the tubes. No pictures of this since when I have the "sharp" scissors out, I put the camera down. Basically, they cut strips into the roll on both sides while leaving a space in the middle. Then we bent the strips down. Voila, a flower. On to the painting part.


First, let me begin by explaining that  the kids decided they needed to wear sunglasses for this activity. That wasn't in the original list of  'What You'll Need', but who am I to argue with creative genius? 


Next, look at his lips (there, in the picture above). That's his this is not eeeeeven working face. Paint all over his fingers, the "flower" flopping everywhere, he was not having it, and he wasn't the only one.

So we put paper under the "flowers" and tried smaller paintbrushes. Still, not really seeming like a streamlined process here.

I thought maybe if we put the flowers on the skewers and painted them that way it would work. They took the sunglasses off at this point, they were getting serious.

Flop. Look at the face this time (above). We thought we were dealing with floppy cardboard before? This was a mess. Since we were going to make more than just the one I decided maybe we should paint the cardboard roll before we did the cutting. 

There, that's better. 

Note: Paint the cardboard roll first, then cut after it's dry. Check. 

Now they were having fun (face below). 

Painting the Styrofoam that we would stick our flowers in was even more fun.

Note: Just paint Styrofoam for fun. Check.

Once everything was all painted we left it to dry. Looks like a big mess, no?

They were excited though. They could see flowers coming out of this mess, and flowers was what they wanted at this point. They weren't messing around with toilet paper rolls for nothing.

Once dry, we cut the rolls that hadn't been cut, and then balled up tissue paper to put in the center of the flowers. Stick the skewers through the cardboard and tissue paper (Again, not as simple as I thought it would be. I ended up having to poke a hole with scissors and then we could stick our skewers through.) 

Stick the other end of the skewers in our Styrofoam "grass". Done. 

Our end result? 

Definitely not Parent's Magazine worthy, and yet absolutely lovely. Am I right? Looks like a couple of kids actually made these... and I have a feeling their Mother's will love them ;)

We have more flowers to add before our bouquets are ready for Mom, but we are tossing the toilet paper rolls and starting something new.

I just noticed I never had them make the "leaves". 

Oops. 

It's a good thing I don't work for the magazine I guess.

Update: We added a hand print flower, put it all in a flower pot with a little green tissue paper, and each Clubhouse Kid took Mom home flowers that will last forever, and don't need to be watered ;)

Happy Mother's Day!!

Ms. Liz

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