May: Flower Moon
“Let us smell more flowers, let us be in the company of what is otherwise a momentary spark of light and joy. For that is the secret to living, no? What is life, without cultivating appreciation for all the sparks of love and beauty there are along the way?”
– J. Peters
May’s Flower Moon speaks to the colorful bounty of wildflowers blooming across the Northern Hemisphere. There are bluebells, violets, snowdrops, wild garlic, and my favorite: the lupine. It is also known as the Corn Planting Moon.
Connected Activity:
A fun activity to do during this vibrant month is to go on a Color Discovery Hike, predicting, observing, and recording all the magical colors you find (the write up for this activity is posted for free on our site www.lovespunwilderness.com, under love and wild things, sharing nature with children.)
You can also create a smell sense game by placing different flowers with present scents in small sealed container with a few holes poked at the top. Old school film canisters were perfect for this! However, they are hard to come by these days. A tea box, a small cardboard box would work well, or a toilet paper roll that you’ve sealed one end off with tap/paper, and the other as well only this side has some smelling holes poked in. Place the flowers inside, cover them up, and shuffles the containers about so that no one knows which flower is in which container. Then try to guess the flower purely based upon its scent! Ideal flowers for this are roses, lavender, basil blossoms, honeysuckle; however, try whatever you have. The beauty of science is not in confirming what we already suspect, yet in being surprised.
And, of course, this is a great time to press and dry the wide variety of flowers for future wreaths and artwork.
Picture Book Companions:
Poppy and the Blooms by Fiona Woodcock
The Flowers' Festival by Elsa Beskow
Flower Alphabet Book by Jerry Pallotta
The Corn Grows Ripe by Dorothy Rhoads
Eddie’s Garden by Sara Garland
The Magic Garden by Lemniscates