Flower Prints

After thinning out the garden today, I felt inspired to create some sort of provocation for cohort 6 which involved the sunflowers and other blooms from the yard.  I am constantly on the look out for new ideas of ways to use the parts of our garden as it finishes, from sunflower stalk forts, to leaf and flower crowns and today we made prints with the flowers.

This seemed like a very logical next step, scaffolding on what the children in cohort are into right now: banging things on other things, seeing the result of this banging, and being outdoors.  They also have been really into picking anything available, but today I harvested the flowers and offered them on the table.
I did the first few, laying a flower on the paper and banging a rock on top.  This attracted a lot of attention and one by one everyone approached and gave it a try.  Some were most interested in the marks or the sounds the rocks created.  Some wanted to just knock everything off the table.  Others were drawn to the flower. 
The results were beautiful, but I found that the round rocks I chose were a little to uneven to create the flower print I was hoping for.  Next time I might try a rolling pin or a flat wooden block for banging.  I'm sure everyone will approve of these changes and the resulting noises that will occur!