Learning About Flowers and Plants : Fun Activities & Free Printables for Kids

Discover a fun, hands-on flower dissection activity for preschoolers! Learn about plant parts with a free printable to boost observation skills, vocabulary, and writing.

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Spring is the perfect time to get outside, enjoy the sunshine, and explore the beauty of nature. With flowers blooming all around us, it’s a wonderful opportunity to introduce kids to plant science in a hands-on way. Activities like observing real flowers up close can spark curiosity and help children connect what they see in nature to what they learn in books.

With all the warm weather this spring, our garden is bursting with colorful blooms! 🌸 We decided to make the most of it by pretending to be botanists during science time and dissecting a flower. This simple activity was not only fun but also gave Little Tiger (my 4-year-old preschooler) a chance to practice observation skills, expand his vocabulary, and work on writing and labeling the main parts of a flower—petals, stem, leaves, and roots. We used our Learning About Plants printable, which you can download for free towards the end of this post!

If your kids enjoy learning about plants, you might also like these related activities: Plant Life Cycle & Photosynthesis Printables, Suncatcher Flower Mandalas: A Nature Craft, and Preschool Painting with Flowers.

Learning About Flowers and Plants

Plants and Flowers Observation Tray

Shovel

Flowers

Observation tray and tools (magnifying glass, flashlight, tweezers, paper towel, scissors, Q-tips…)

Pen

Scissors

Glue

Tape

Markers/Crayons/Colored Pencils

Learning About Plants printable that is available to download for free at the end of this post

Directions:

For the first part of
this activity we went outside and gathered flowers. I couldn’t get myself to
dig up our bulbs (tulips and daffodils) even in the name of science, so we dug
up some weeds to use for the roots in this activity and used the leaves, stems,
and petals of our tulips and daffodils.

Page 1: Learning and Labeling Flower Picture Activity

Have child cut across the dashed line at the bottom of the page, then cut out the plant labels. Identify each part of the plant and glue the labels on the line. They can also color the page.

When we put our labels on we named the part, figured out the first letter in the word, and Little Tiger would find the label according to the first letter. This is a great first step to reading.

Page 2 & 3: Flower Dissection and Observations

To begin, talk about the word dissection and how it is a methodical way to take something apart to be able to study and observe it. Little Tiger decided this meant we needed to carefully take apart our flower (and not just rip it apart).

Have the child carefully dissect the flower, one part at a time and examine each part (color, texture, smell…) Write observations down as your child makes them on page 3. When they are done with their observations have them glue the part to page 2 and use the labels at the bottom of the page to label the parts. They can also color the left column on page 3.

Page 3 & 4: Observations and Writing

Have child cut along the black dotted lines on page 4 (not the gray lines), and then write one label (Petals, Stem, Leaves, and Roots) on each line. You can use a light colored marker or pencil to write the word first so they can trace it, or they can write the words independently. Tape each label to the correct row on page 3 (making a flap that covers the observation section). The gray area is for the tape.

I printed out page #4 twice. On the first page I wrote the words. I gave Little Tiger the option of tracing the words or writing it herself and she choose to write it herself on the second page. We haven’t written on lines very often because the restrictiveness of them would often cause her frustration, this time around she kept at it. I didn’t point out any differences or make any corrections with the letters she wrote unless she asked. There will always be time to learn the correct direction of the letter “S”, or how the cross on the letter t should be short… No sense in making her feel bad for trying. She was proud of her work, and I was proud of her effort!