Last time I blogged, I told you all about the amaryllis I planted with my kids! I’m back with another amaryllis craft, but this one involves a meat mallet.
After our amaryllis bloom began to fade, I cut off the stalk. The flower still looked to have some life in it, and I immediately thought of the leaf and flower print activity we added to our website a few months ago. In the middle of winter, you bet your garden spade I’m going to squeeze every last bit of life out of a flower!
The material list for the activity is pretty simple, but I couldn’t find my rubber mallet. I am thinking it’s tucked somewhere in the garage and honestly it was too cold to root around in there hunting for it. So instead I wrapped some wool felt around a meat mallet and let my 7-year old have at it.
She had two flowers to work with, and for the first, she picked off all the petals and rearranged them into a flower shape on the fabric. (See header image above.)
For the second, she just laid the bloom down and hammered away to see what would happen.
Here’s what I found to be most fascinating about this activity – the prints turned out purple! The amaryllis flowers were very bright ruby red. I’m sure there is a fascinating scientific explanation for this. If you have theories - or facts! - of why this happened, please share in the comments.
Here’s my review of this activity: I would DEFINITELY do it again. I would, however, use fresh flowers instead of somewhat mushy faded ones. I’d also use a variety of flowers and leaves instead of just one. We’ll repeat this one in the summer when we have more flower to choose from!
Beth Saunders
