Parts of the Flower Play Dough Mats

Are you working on a flower unit this Spring with your kids? Jennifer and her kids are currently exploring the Montessori Approach to botany for kids, and having a blast! Here is what she ha to say about her flower unit study with a set of flower playdough mats that I designed for her. Let’s walk.

I like to blend modern teaching methods (especially Reggio) in with our activities, and one of my favourite ways to do that is through sensory play.

I asked Alecia to create these gorgeous and straightforward flower play dough mats to match our Montessori flower puzzle.

The purpose of the flower puzzle — and these flower play dough mats — is to reinforce to the children the different parts of the flower and their names through hands-on learning.

If you were to look at Montessori Nomenclature Cards (sometimes called 3 part cards), the part of the flower that the card teaches is typically highlighted in red. As a fun twist, I thought it would be fun for the kids to “highlight” the parts of the flower themselves by shaping our homemade rose-scented play dough into the lines of the mat.

As we worked on each of the mats, I went over the term with the children and used our “master guide” (the labeled flower) to guide us in highlighting the right part of the flower.

Download the Free Printable Parts of the Flower Play Dough Mats here:

And if you’re interested in seeing how these flower play dough mats can be worked into a larger botany unit study, check out my introduction to Montessori Botany post: