You might have noticed that it’s becoming more and more enjoyable to have your breakfast or morning coffee on the balcony, while you bask in the sun and your lungs fill with fresh air. This is exactly what spring feels like, and children, more than anyone else, are impatiently waiting for the opportunity to play outside. So, as a teacher or a homeschooling parent, it’s understandable to want to include fun spring activities for kids in your daily schedule.
In this article, we’ll cover exciting, refreshing, and outdoorsy spring activities for kids of all ages. We’ll also make sure all of the activities have educational potential and benefit the child’s cognitive, social, and physical well-being.
So, if you’ve been searching for inspiration, this article will be your muse. Without keeping you any further, let’s explore the 10 different family-fun yet classroom-adjustable spring activities for kids.
10 Fun Spring Activities for Kids
In the past few seasons, kids have been forced to spend an abnormally large amount of time at home, mostly learning online. Isolated from social contact, the kids’ development has been affected, which is yet another reason to seize the opportunity and organize outdoor spring activities for kids. Here’s what you can do!
Plan a Nature Hike
As we mentioned, spring is the season where Mother Nature takes on its most colorful coat and delivers captivating sights. For this reason, we highly recommend indulging yourself and your kids in frequent hikes or walks in nature. It’s the ultimate spring activity for kids as it delivers benefits in several aspects.
First, hiking is great for the motor development of kids and their physical health. Second, hiking in nature stimulates the senses and rests the eyes. Third, exploring nature provides kids with the knowledge that goes way beyond anything that books can offer. Finally, spending quality time in nature provides an amazing opportunity to bond or socialize with friends.
On top of all this, you can always include some extra activities while hiking!
What can you do while hiking?
Explore The Sprouting Plants
In Spring, many different species of plants and flowers sprout, which means you can teach kids about biodiversity and the characteristics as well as the importance of different plant families to our environment and the health of our planet.
Use our Plants and Garden worksheet collections as guides for what to search for and how to turn your expedition into an educational journey.
Plant Something Green
Go one step beyond mere exploration. Once your child is aware of the importance of biodiversity for our planet, you can teach them how to be environmentally responsible by starting a tradition of planting trees and flowers in spring. This is also a great way to promote prosocial habits in children. Teachers can also use this and encourage children to plant trees and flowers in the school’s backyard. Then, you can care for the plants together and see them grow.
Do Physical Activity in Nature
The hidden spots of greenery that you may encounter while exploring are perfect for physical activities, whether it’s running, fitness, throwing and catching a ball, or doing yoga. Just imagine the serenity of listening to the birds, feeling the light breeze, and hearing your child’s laughter while running around trying to catch a ball.
If you want to work on letting go of the accumulated stress, then yoga with kids in nature is something you must try.
Have a Healthy Picnic
Last but not least, you can hike to a specific location where the whole family can enjoy some quality time with delicious food and drinks. This is a really smart idea because if you’ve been spending a lot of time at home, the first few hikes are going to most likely exhaust you. This means taking a break to rest and replenish your energy will be more than welcome.
Visit Botanical Gardens
Botanical gardens are yet another sensation that’s best explored in spring. They usually contain a large number of plant and flower species that are hard or almost impossible to find in your local environment. Kids will surely appreciate and be fascinated to see some of the things in person that they’ve been learning about only through pictures.
Before going, make sure to check out their upcoming programs to see if there’s something special happening during your visit. Many gardens offer educational programs for kids or have specific themed events where a lot of new things can be learned.
Organize an Outdoor Movie Projection
Setting a movie projection outdoors might be a challenge, but it’s well worth it. You can organize an outdoor movie projection in your backyard for your kids and their friends or the school backyard for the whole class if your school has the resources.
To set an outdoor movie projection you’ll need a projector, a projection screen (a big white wall might be okay), big speakers and/or amplifiers, a good movie or documentary, and a lot of snacks and drinks!
On Amazon, you can find budget-friendly outdoor projectors for around $50, which is a steal! On top of that, if you have a white or bright wall that you can use as a projection screen, then you don’t need other investments and this is something you use the whole summer.
Have a Lesson in the Local Park
Both teachers and homeschool parents might enjoy taking a break from the monotony of the classroom and teaching a lecture in the park. While it might be a little distracting for young kids, older children would definitely appreciate the change of scenery. This works wonders for the overall motivation and engagement of kids.
You can also match the unit’s topic with the outdoor activity. Here are some topics whose main idea can be better captured in nature:
- Coniferous Forests Facts & Worksheets (24 pages)
- Earth Day Facts & Worksheets (24 pages, 15 activities)
- Weather Facts & Worksheets (27 pages)
- Soil Facts & Worksheets (25 pages)
- Wind Facts & Worksheets (24 pages)
- Climate Change Facts & Worksheets (24 pages)
- Plant Worksheets (7 activities)
If you want more ideas, visit our All Natural World Worksheets section on our website and find something that works for you.
Make a Lemonade Stand
The lemonade stand is probably the most popular choice as a first job for children. It offers a great opportunity to teach kids responsibility, money management, running their own business, and goal setting.
If you think the time has come for you to teach these things to kids, once the sun has peaked and people go out to enjoy, you have a chance to organize this plan. Kids will have fun, enjoy the warm weather, and tap into their entrepreneurial spirit.
That’s what makes the lemonade stand a fantastic spring activity for kids. It offers a very unique set of benefits that are hard to achieve through other activities. Just be careful; choosing the right day and location is crucial. For ideal results, it needs to be a sunny, warm day where a lot of people are out and about.
Build a Fort or a Treehouse in the Backyard
In spring, the weather allows us to spend more and more time outside. So, how do we make the most out of this? Kids love to build stuff and they love to have more space to play in, so a treehouse or a fort in the backyard makes a lot of sense as a spring project.
The benefits of building a treehouse result in the improvement of physical skills such as strength, coordination, as well as mental well-being, and cognitive skills such as imagination, attention, and creativity.
However, children’s motor skills and senses are the ones that benefit the most. One study from July 2008 about myopia (nearsightedness) showed that kids who play outside have better vision than kids who are predominantly inside.
Hang a Bird Feeder
When it comes to building stuff, you can also engage in creating birdhouses and hanging them on trees in the backyard, neighborhood, or the school’s backyard. With this activity, kids have an opportunity to learn about birds as well as be more responsible and compassionate by caring for their well-being.
Building bird feeders is a much easier project to implement than building a treehouse, which some families can’t afford. Plus, it’s something that might be achievable in the classroom as well. Bird feeders can be fancy, but you can also find some great DIY tutorials on the internet on how to make them with affordable materials.
Play Outdoor Games
Playing outside with other kids is one of the fondest memories of adults and something that stays with us forever. Whether it was playing ball, hopscotch, or the classic hide-and-seek, we all have something that defined our childhood.
Spring is the perfect season for you to transfer the knowledge of these games to your kids and enjoy the time spent together. They’re fun, exciting, and physically demanding, which means that kids will spend a lot of energy, lowering the chances of being nervous, aggressive, or simply hyperactive when it’s time to learn and concentrate.
Best of all, outdoor games are usually group activities that require kids to socialize with other kids by cooperating and building strategies together. This aids the children’s social development and emotional maturity.
Make a Campfire With Delicious Smores
As we dive deeper into Spring, we get warmer nights that are very pleasant and inviting. Plus, parents usually work during the day, which means the only time they can use the warm weather and take kids outside is in the afternoon or at night. However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t organize spring activities for kids throughout the week and use the warm weather. Making a campfire is one solution that might be appealing to families with busy schedules.
Moreover, spending a night outside with hot cocoa and delicious smores is a truly unforgettable experience. You can also tell stories, talk about the children’s day, and make up for lost time due to work responsibilities. Children will feel loved, secure, and have their tummy full.
Count the Stars
Of course, you can also turn the campfire into an educational activity, especially if the kids have been learning about stars and constellations. Trying to find them in the night sky gives children a practical skill and more real-life knowledge that doesn’t depend solely on reading books.
If you need help with turning a traditional campfire into an educational night about stars, please check out our Stars and Star and Constellation Facts and Worksheets collections on our website.
Collect Rocks, Plats, or Flowers
Last but not least, a fun spring activity for kids is collecting rocks, plants, and flowers. This is not only exciting but also very educational as it shows kids how diverse and beautiful our planet is.
Go on a walk in the park, or better yet organize a hike in some of your local nature spots and ask kids to pay attention to the different and interesting rocks, plants, or flowers that you pass by. If something catches their eye, they can take a sample and bring it home for further examination.
When at home, you can teach your child how to preserve the plants and categorize them according to their basic characteristics. This way children will learn the name, features, and functions of many different plants in their surroundings, but also their implications for human health and well-being. Some plants are edible, while others might be harmful. How so? Well, that’s a separate topic you can base a unit on.
Before You Leave
Now, you and your children are all set for spring thanks to our fun spring activities for kids! Children can spend more time in nature by putting the above-mentioned activities into practice. But, let’s remind ourselves about why this is so important.
Well, first, while they’re under the sun, they’ll absorb vitamin D which is essential for human health. Second, while they’re hiking or playing, they’ll move their body significantly more than they could ever in a home environment, which is crucial for their motor development. Finally, they’ll breathe fresh air and rest their eyes from their computers.
When it comes to learning in nature, let us remind you to visit our website and browse through our worksheet collection to find interesting topics for your favorite season.
Finally, before you leave, don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter and regularly check out our blog as we’re frequently updating it with insightful new information in the field of children’s education.
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