Spring Outdoor Activities for Kids

spring outdoor activities for kids

I hope if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere that it’s getting warm enough where you live to add in some outdoor activities with the kids. It’s easy to do a lot of learning outside when the weather is nice; my daughter has a fond memory of doing long division in sidewalk chalk at her school. But if you need some more specific ideas, here are some fun and educational spring outdoor activities for kids to do at home or at school.

Gather some glass bottles, rocks and other natural materials to make a garden xylophone with these instructions from The Moments at Home. This looks so fun, and you can use this idea to make musical instruments with other objects you find around the home/classroom/playground too.

This post from Child’s Play ABC has a lot of great outdoor learning ideas for kids, but the one I wanted to highlight is going on a rainbow scavenger hunt. Kids can collect things of different colors and see if they can make a rainbow (or just sort things by color). Check out more ideas for scavenger hunts.

Another good activity to do with things you collect from outdoors is making natural paint brushes. Get the instructions from Messy Little Monster, and of course you can test them out by painting outside, too.

Speaking of art, have you ever made paint from dandelions? (I dyed yarn with dandelions once, and it was a lot of fun.) Learn how from Little Cooks Reading Books, and then you can use your natural paintbrushes along with natural paint!

You can also paint with mud, like in this post from There’s Just One Mommy. Or make an outdoor, garden themed sensory bin with real dirt like this one from Mess for Less.

Or kids can gather materials to help them build their own nests as they learn about how birds and other animals build nests. The Crazy Outdoor Mama has a printable and post that will help.

What activities do you love to do with kids when it’s nice outside?

Growing Up Ladybug and How to Become a Butterfly are both by Stepanka Sekaninova and illustrated by Linh Dao, and they came out at the same time and are on similar themes, so let’s look at them together.

Growing Up Ladybug is narrated by Mariella, a seven-spot ladybug. She talks about the parts of a ladybug, where they live, different kinds of ladybugs, why humans love them, their defenses against predators and the life cycle of a ladybug.

The drawings are cute if not always scientifically accurate, it’s not in such a way that’s likely to confuse kids (who probably already know that ladybug mamas don’t push their larval babies around in strollers, for instance.

It’s a good general description of the life cycle of a lady bug and why we like having them around.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Similarly, How to Become a Butterfly covers the life cycle of a butterfly, starting with caterpillars eating burning nettle leaves. (Here Amanda is the narrator.) The book talks about a few of the more than 18,000 daytime butterflies in the world as well as other creatures that live in the meadow (there’s that ladybug again, along with crickets, bees and other bugs).

It also covers some of the enemies of caterpillars like wasps and spiders, and the defenses that caterpillars use to try to prevent being eaten. It illustrates how caterpillars grow and change as they molt and prepare to pupate, and what a caterpillar looks like before and while it is forming its chrysalis. And while the book uses the word metamorphasis it doesn’t really talk about what happens between the caterpillar forming a chrysalis and the butterfly hatching.

This butterfly is a peacock butterfly, and once it hatches the book covers the parts of a butterfly and the life cycle. It also talks about nocturnal moths (though it says nocturnal butterflies are “usually called moths” when moths are actually a different species) and what butterflies do at night.

I’m maybe a little hard on this book because my daughter is a butterfly expert from way back, but it is still cute and good for the very basic basics of the butterfly life cycle.

Both books would be fun additions to your bookshelf for younger kids starting to learn about different animals or who have an interest in insects.

About the book: 32 pages, hardcover. Published 2026 by Albatross Media. Suggested retail price $16.95.

Have you read?

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