Make plant label popsicle sticks

Before you begin

• Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. There's also more guidance to help you carry out your risk assessment, including examples.
• Make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
• Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers.

Make your mark

1. Gather everyone together and explain that everyone’s going to make a plant label using a popsicle stick. Everyone should have a think about which plant they may want to use it for.
2. Give out some paper, colouring materials and pencils and let people design their plant label. The label can be decorated however people wish and they can decorate both sides if they want to.
3. When everyone’s ready, hand out the lollipop sticks and let everyone decorate them using felt tips, permanent markers or paints.
4. To make sure the decoration will stand up to the weather if they’re placed outside, you may wish to waterproof or seal them. 

Test your designs

1. Once the labels are dry, everyone should lay them at one end of the meeting space.
2. Ask everyone to get into pairs. One person should label themselves ‘A’ and the other ‘B’.
3. Person A should explain to person B what their label looks like.
4. Person B should go to the labels and try to find A’s label from their description. Once they think they know which it is, they should take it back and give it to person A.
5. If they’re correct, the pairs swap over and now person B should tell person A what their label looks like.
6. If they’re incorrect, person B should go back to the labels to look again.
7. People can use their own label to mark their plant, either at the meeting place or at home.
8. If you’ve an allotment, veg plot or plants growing at your meeting place, why not make labels to identify them?