118) Baking Cup Paper Flowers

A few weeks ago I was looking for a craft for the Bee's preschool. The requirements were that it needed to be something that kids ages 3-5 could work on and complete in just a few minutes, make on their own and not involve materials that would need to dry. After thinking for a while I remembered seeing some beautiful paper flowers made from baking cup liners that seemed like they could be perfect. The Bee was more then happy to help me test them out.

 We started by buying a bunch of different colored baking cup liners in two sizes. However if you wanted make these and only had one color liner, you could easily color or paint the liners before hand. We then stuck the end of a pipe cleaner through the holes of a button and twisted the pipe cleaner to hold the button in place. The Bee selected a small and large paper liner and stuck the pipe cleaner through the center. She had a little trouble getting the pipe cleaner through the liner without it ripping, so I put holes in the center of a bunch of liners and let her put on the ones she wanted.

Once we made the first flower we discovered that they were pretty easy to make and there were a lot of variations we could do to make them even more interesting. We tried:

- coloring the paper liner

-cutting the liners with scissors

-using a few liners in different colors

-using beads in the center of the flower or on the stem

- adding paper leaves

-using different colored pipe cleaners

-twisting multiple pipe cleaners together for a more interesting stem

The flower were a big hit with the pre-schoolers and they make a great centerpiece on our dining room table!