Blooming Paper Flower Experiment

This blooming paper flower activity is magical! Kids can enjoy crafting their own flowers, or cutting out our printable flowers while working on their scissor skills! Fold in the petals before dropping them down on a shallow plate of water, and get ready for your kiddos to be amazed! Watching the paper flowers bloom in the water is truly magical!

Blooming Paper Flowers for All Ages

This fun activity can be enjoyed by kids of all ages (adults too!). It is such a fun science experiment where kids will learn all about absorption! Even toddlers will enjoy placing the paper down onto the water to see the vibrant colors inside! It is a great way to develop language skills while strengthening color recognition.

Read on to get the printable flowers and for more color recognition activities, visit our full list of easy to set-up ideas!

How to Set Up This Blooming Paper Flower Activity

In this video, you can see how we put together this magical activity! We used our printable flowers for a quick set up too. All of the vibrant colors magically opening in water is such a fun sensory experience! Kids will have the best reactions!

All activities should be supervised by an adult. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. This post may contain affiliate links.

Download the Blooming Paper Flower Printable

We know grown ups are busy, so we created a printable so you can easily set up this activity! These flowers come in different shapes, sizes, and colors, but they will all magically open when placed in water!

Make sure that you don’t miss out on our Dot the Rainbow and our Color Mixing Bundle for more ways to explore vibrant colors!

For more printable activities, visit our Printable Shop. It is filled with easy to set-up activities that help strengthen early childhood education skills!

• Shallow Dish
• Water

• Printer
• Paper
• Shallow Plate
• Water

Step 3

Fold the petals into the center of the flower.

Step 4

Place the folded paper on a shallow plate of water and enjoy the magic as the flowers bloom! Be sure to experiment with different types of papers and make predictions about how fast it will absorb the water to open the flower!

Step 1

Print out our printable blooming paper flowers. We have the Canon PIXMA G3260 MegaTank printer – we love it because it is budget-friendly and super efficient with color with it’s refillable tanks!

Step 2

Cut out the flowers.

Step 3

Fold the petals into the center of the flower.

Step 4

Place the folded paper on a shallow plate of water and enjoy the magic as the flowers bloom! Be sure to experiment with different types of papers and make predictions about how fast it will absorb the water to open the flower!

Educational Benefits of this Blooming Paper Flower Activity

This is such a fun STEM project! It certainly looks like magic, but this is all about absorption. As the fibers in the paper absorb water, it expands and opens up! You can experiment with different types of paper thickness, noting that some papers open up slower or quicker depending on how easily it is able to absorb the water.

Younger children can also learn something too! They will be able to practice their understanding of color recognition while working on language development. Ask them what colors are being revealed, or have them repeat the names of the colors.

What’s Next?