Spring is finally here! Birds are chirping, flowers are blooming, and the weather is just fine. Time to get out of the house, take a walk, visit a park, and embrace the great outdoors. Enjoy this time with your kids with these five fun spring activities.
Plant A Garden
This time of year, even the local grocery store is carrying colorful little packets of flower and vegetable seeds. What better way to enjoy spring than to plant them in paper cups and watch them grow?
More ambitious gardeners can plan a vegetable garden for the backyard and start the seedlings inside, safe from hard rains, wind, and unexpected frost. You can entertain the kids even more if you let them paint flower pots or decorate the paper cups with markers. Generous amounts of sunshine, judicious watering, and soon little green shoots will rise from the soil.
Paint Bird Houses
Welcome home the migratory birds with inexpensive wooden bird houses, which are often available at craft stores. Paint them bright and sunny and hang them within viewing distance from a window, so kids can see what kinds of birds choose to nest within.
Have A Tea Party
On bright, beautiful days, set up a table outdoors, bring out the plastic ware, and serve up finger sandwiches and apple juice for an Alice-in-Wonderland kind of tea party. For a festive touch of spring, grab an old straw hat and festoon it with flowers, real or fake.
Make A Pine Cone Bird Feeder
Find a nice, fat pine cone, glob lots of peanut butter in all the nooks and crannies, and roll the whole thing in bird seed. Hang it from a tree branch and watch the birds come calling.
Use a pair of binoculars to help identify the feeding birds. Borrow a birdwatching book from the library to help your child identify common backyard avians in your area. Also check out phone apps that help you identify birds by the distinctive sound of their calls.
Make A Sundial
Now that the sun is finally out, consider helping your child tell time by making a shadow clock. You’ll need a thick dowel stick and something to mark the rim of the sundial, like rocks. Choose a sunny place and drive the dowel into the ground. Every hour, on the hour, mark the tip of the position of the shadow with a pebble, and mark the number of the hour with chalk. Soon your child will be running over to check the time the old-fashioned way.
