Kids can participate in fun botanical activities to welcome spring, both indoors and outside, in the neighborhood and beyond, building excitement, anticipation and a sense of awareness of the changes that occur at this time of the year.
Children can learn about and appreciate local botanical treasures, explore their creativity, develop feelings of accomplishment, make memories and have fun.
Here are 13 ways to celebrate spring and make it fun:
- Take the kids to a greenhouse, botanical garden, flower show or the floral department at the supermarket. Encourage them to discover flower varieties and colors. Bring sketchbooks and pencils for drawing and note taking. Ask the children to share their findings with you on the way home.
- Buy some seeds or herbs to start now. Visit a garden center or the local discount store garden section. Pick up potting soil and plastic pots or use containers from your recycling bin. Follow seed packet instructions for starting plants indoors.
- Children can record the growth and development of the plants in their own hand-decorated gardening journal. The journal can be a store-bought notebook with cover artwork created by the kids. Inside they can make notes, draw pictures, attach seed packets, create collages from seed catalog pages and more.
- Contact your state or local cooperative extension service (D.C., Maryland, Virginia) to learn about local endangered species of wildflowers. Find out when they flower and where you can go to see them at a nature preserve. Mark your calendar and make plans to go when they are in bloom.
- Kids can design and color their own version of a seed package on an 8 ½ by 11” sheet of paper. Have them create and name a new flower or draw an existing variety.
- Learn more about your state flower on the State Symbols USA website. Notice the leaves and plant shape, as well as whether it grows in sun or shade. Maybe the children have seen it growing wild. Plan to go exploring for it on a spring hike before it comes into bloom. You can revisit it during the summer when it has flowers.
- Children will enjoy decorating cupcakes with colorful, creative flowers and leaves. Supply them with candy, sprinkles and squirt tube icing for active fun, and delicious treats. Store bought round and flower shaped cookies are also great for decorating.
- 3D pompom tissue paper flowers are fun to make and can be grouped to fill a centerpiece bowl. Look for packages of multicolor tissue paper at the dollar store.
- Host an indoor garden theme party on a cold or cloudy afternoon. Tell your kids to dress in bright floral colors so they can be the flowers and plants. No matching outfits required. Turn on all of the lights to make it sunny inside. Ask them to sway like flowers in the breeze while they sing a favorite song together. Let them make up a flower story to perform or have them read flower poems aloud. Do some floral crafts and decorate some floral treats for added fun. Remember to take lots of photos to share with friends and family far away.
- Make “Spring Is Coming” cards with botanical designs to send to the relatives, to give to elderly neighbors or to deliver to a nursing home.
- Have the children pick out books at the library about flowers, herbs and gardening. Encourage them to design and color a garden or choose flowers to plant after the last frost. Find out when the last frost is in your area. Mark your calendar to start planting outdoors. The kids will look forward with excitement.
- Take a walk through your neighborhood to see if any flower bulbs have pushed up through the remaining snow or cold ground. Have the children draw what they see or make notes in their journals. Look up spring bulbs in your gardening library books. Snowdrops, crocus and daffodils are some varieties of early blooming spring bulbs. The bulbs you see in your neighborhood may be available in several different colors. Mark your calendar and make plans to plant spring bulbs in the fall, so you can look for them next spring.
- Make a seed packet display to hang in a window or doorway. Have the kids use a stick from your yard, a wrapping paper tube or a wooden spoon for the hanger. The children can punch a hole in the top of the seed packets to hang them from the stick, tube or spoon using different lengths of yarn, string or fishing line. Use another piece of yarn to hang their display from the window or doorway.
Children can have fun now and plan activities to look forward to later on in the spring, summer and fall. You will have encouraged the budding gardener in them, along with the nature lover, the artist and the explorer.
