Spring Activities to Get Kids Outside

By the end of March where I live we are starting to have more warm days than not, and all we want to do is spend more time outside. Luckily we can make it educational and a little fun, too, with these spring activities involving the outdoors.

Of course it’s great to do things that will get kids outside and keep them going outside, like starting a garden or installing bird feeders and going out to regularly fill/check on them. Making seed bombs is a fun thing you can do inside and then use outside to see what grows. Or make these for Mother’s Day gifts! Get the instructions from Natural Beach Living.

Make your own bubble wands (and/or your own bubble solution) and get outside to blow bubbles. If you want to make a giant bubble wand, you can find out how from It’s Always Autumn.

If you have access to a sidewalk you can make your own sidewalk chalk (or chalk paint) and draw or play sidewalk chalk games. First up, get the recipe for chalk from Princess Pinky Girl, then get some ideas for sidewalk chalk games.

I personally love hopscotch because it gets kids moving, but you can also print out or come up with your own spring movement activity cards (these are from From ABCs to SATs) and take them outside to use in a game or just let kids go wild hopping like bunnies and waddling like ducks. I love the idea of a spring themed game of Red Light, Green Light where kids have to do the movements as they go.

And of course nature walks are great all the time, and there are all sorts of themes you can use, from collecting different colors to textures, shapes and more. I love this one for a fairy house building activity from Glitter on a Dime. First kids can walk around and collect materials, then design and decorate their fairy homes.

Spring Flower Activities for Kids

Printable Spring Memory Cards

Printable Spring Bingo Cards

More Spring STEM Ideas

Learning numbers actually involves a few different skills, from recognizing the shape of the number and knowing the word that goes with it to understanding one to one correspondence for counting and what order the numbers go in.

A lot of this is learned best through play and activities that get kids counting and tracing and otherwise interacting with numbers. These activities can help.

I specifically mentioned tracing above because of these number formation rhymes cards from Teaching Mama, which can be used in lots of ways to practice making the shapes of the numbers, including tracing, lining up items on the number shapes (and counting them!), using playdough to shape the numbers and so on. Each number has a little rhyme to help you remember how to make it, which is cute.

And speaking of playdough, you can find lots of playdough number mats with different themes for kids to use as they learn about numbers. Preschool Play and Learn, for example, has these cute apple themed ones that also teach one to one correspondence as you learn the numbers and count to 10.

Or use these tree-themed ones from Live Over Cs to form the numbers, count out items on a ten frame and place the correct number of items in the tree to match the number (do this with playdough, little buttons or whatever manipulatives you have on hand). Your little builders will also love these Duplo number mats from Life Over Cs, which allow you to shape the number out of blocks and count out the number of blocks that corresponds to each number.

I also love these mats from The Savvy Sparrow that include the number and the word you can trace with playdough or marker, showing how to count the number on your fingers, a tens frame and a number line.

Finger plays and counting songs are lots of fun for little ones, too, and Childhood 101 has a great collection of songs and rhymes having to do with numbers (as well as printable song cards you can use with them.

This cardboard roll number chain form Hands On As We Grow would be a fun addition to singing number songs or to use in other play and counting games. And we all love something easy to make with stuff we already have.

Older kids who already know the order of numbers can also use these connect the dot number printables from Fun Learning for Kids. Or use the shapes for playdough mats or to practice tracing even for kids who don’t know all the numbers in order yet.

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