This was one of my favorite pastimes when I was little. I remember playing with my best childhood friend, picking dandelions or other "flowers", and then spending hours curling the stems. I had a fun walk down memory lane today watching Anna light up as I taught her how much fun these flower stems can be!Items needed:
Dandelions, spring yard "flowers" (aka weeds)
An enthusiastic helper!
Nice workspace where you can use a bowl of water--oh, and some paper towels are helpful
Step 1: Choose a flower with a nice long stem
Step 2: Pinch off the flower head to remove from the stem.
Step 3: Peel the stem in half lengthwise, starting at one end 
like so... peel all the way down so you have two pieces.
Step 4: Put each piece of the stems in a bowl of water.
Let them float around...
Watch the magic for a while!
Step 5: Remove from the bowl of water and let dry on a paper towel. 
Behold the beauty of curled flower stems! Despite the fact that they have no real useful purpose but to make you smile as you watch... Although, we were tempted to make a green picture with them for St. Patrick's Day this week. We may still do that tomorrow.
So tell me, did you like to curl stems of dandelions as a child? Or maybe you did more of another memory I have--pinching the head of a dandelion off while singing, "Mama had a baby and the head popped off!" Yeah, I think I'll hold off on teaching that one to Anna and David. But I'd be willing to bet they'll learn it from some other children, much the same way I learned it. Isn't it great that some things will never change?
Edited to add:
After I posted this I did a google search to see how popular this idea is and I found this blog post about it with actual dandelions.
Dandelion Curls
We don't have actual dandelions in our yard, so we had to made do with smaller stemmed weeds.
1 comment:
I've never heard of that, but my boys would love it! Thanks for sharing. Anna looks so cute and pleased with her creations.
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