Kid-friendly lavender wands {A-Z Play at Home}

I’m the first to admit I’m not a great gardener but the one thing we do have is a good supply of lavender. It’s one of my favourite plants and makes the garden smell gorgeous. It has a very pretty flower but what do you do with it once it’s flowered and over for the year?

We’ve experimented with homemade lavender playdough before but for our weekly A-Z Play at Home blog series I thought we would harvest the flowers and try making lavender wands – a kid-friendly version.

It is quite easy to harvest your lavender flowers. Once they have blossomed simply cut about 30cm of the stem and flower head off of the plant. Tie the ends of the stems together in bunches and hang them upside down in your airing cupboard. Drying them this way preserves the flower heads so just leave them for a couple of weeks.

When we visited Somerset Lavender to walk through some beautiful lavender fields recently we saw some pretty lavender wands. Have you heard of lavender wands before? The stems and heads are interwoven with thin ribbon. This helps preserve them and are a great way to place in a drawer and keep your clothes smelling fresh.

Have you ever tried baking with lavender? We made some delicious lavender flavoured shortbread earlier this year. You can even use any leftover flowers and fill up a sachet bag and place inside a pillowcase for a really good nights sleep.

How to create kid-friendly lavender wands

To make our own kid-friendly version of a lavender wands we gathered a few colourful autumnal leaves along with our lavender stems. We grabbed about 10 stems and gently wrapped them inside the leaves (first I tied them together with a piece of cotton).

You can easily add any other herbs or flowers you have in your garden, although I have to admit everything is pretty much over in our garden for the year.

Then we tied a piece of string around them to keep everything in place.

Then hang your lavender wands up. The children added theirs to our little bug hotel so I’m really hoping that the smell doesn’t drive the bugs away!

See what others have made inspired by the letter W:

Waterbeads Jack O Lantern Sensory Bottle from Teach Me Mommy

W is for Words all around us from My Story Corner