Activities To Do With Children Through Spring

As a parent who values their time, and often feels torn between competing priorities (and often struggling with executive decision making) I know you don’t want to be reading an endless intro about spring based nature activities for children. I know, because I’m one of those people, and often I ask myself whether I would bother reading my own blog… That is why I like to structure it a bit so that you can skip and scan to get the main points or dive a bit deeper with my rambles because all rambles deserve a good outlet and as much as I would love you to go down that rabbit hole with me, you don’t have to. So, feel free to skip to the ideas or fall into my musings with me.

Getting back to the season at hand, spring is well and truly underway here in the southern hemisphere, with wild weather of both extremes, days of heat followed by days of rain and icy winds here in Melbourne Victoria. I would not expect anything less from spring. Many northern hemisphere plants are flowering which are great for the bees and our veggie patches. Our native plants bloom through the year with a strong dominance in the winter months I find, but that is not to say we don’t have native plants showing their colours and feeding our birds and bees with their nectars in the traditional spring months. I am a big advocate for doing things outdoors in all seasons, and spring lends itself beautifully with the lengthened days and often warmer weather interspersed with reminders of what winter can be like. It is the perfect time to get some rays on your skin, boosting your vitamin D levels and everyone feeling refreshed all over by the sweet caress of spring air. So if you are looking for inspirations as to what to do outdoors, or want to peruse a few ideas to see if anything sparks your interest, below are a few of our favourite activities to partake in through the season of spring.

Planting seeds (gorilla planting)

I know spring is always the time for planting seeds. At one point with 4 children we were living in an apartment with minimal balcony space, where most of it was taken up by drying washing, a safe space for cats to keep away from children and any pot plants we had, had been destroyed by our cats. As I love getting my hands in the soil and my little children love digging and watering, I didn’t want to lose a year of spring planting. This brought the year of gorilla planting, sowing seeds on street verges and shared green spaces. Now at any place we live we like to leave it a little cosier than when we moved in so we plant and sew many seeds to see what will grow and what colours will come with Spring each year. It makes great stopping points during walks checking in on our seeds, seeing if they haven’t been carried off by ants and great moments to redirect into when things are getting a bit crazy to go and water the front verge or check on a plants growth (strawberry counting nasturtium flower checking, and bees visiting the lavender and why hasn’t the wattle plant bloomed, and I wonder when those snapdragons are going to flower, and I wonder what happened to the lupine seeds?). You get my drift.

Tadpole hunting

On occasion, we have found that we need a specific mission to motivate the children to get out the door, especially with all the most interesting family members doing such interesting things on computers at home during lockdown (big sisters that don’t want to hang out with you are always the most interesting individuals). In spring we have gone on tadpole hunt walks (not to take home but to find where they are), looking for puddles deep enough, looking for streams and ponds where they may like to hide. Occasionally we have taken a jar along with us to try and get a closer look and so far, surprisingly, we have managed to not really find any, but plenty of mosquito larvae, little fish, and other things. We know frogs are around as we have heard them and seen them, and we are now in the process of planning the creation of a little impermanent structure to invite Froggie friends over so we can get to watch them develop. It has always been a pleasure to have those seeking moments as they lead you onto different paths and changing perspective of how you look at things, as well as caring for natures little lives as well.

Weed flower collection for bath and playdough play

As you have probably noticed already, we love to bring nature into our indoor play and one of our favourites is weed flower collections. I say weed flowers, as we do not want to necessarily be picking flowers from people’s front gardens, or parks, or reducing food for bees and native birds, unless they have dropped to the ground from the trees. So, we collect plenty of dandelion flowers, vetch, grass onion flowers, clover, Paterson’s curse, capeweed wood sorrel etc. With them will come leaves, twigs rocks and shells of course that all get incorporated into playdough play creations and often repurposed into flower bowl baths, sandpit play and kitchen play.

Wet felting shapes

This is such a soothing and mindful little task for any child and especially water babies, so it is well worth the little bit extra research and preparation (if you haven’t ever seen it done just pop onto google to find some info - Curly Birds – the art of play, wet felting with kids had a good beginners guide). It requires warm soapy water and carded wool in any colour you like that you can usually purchase at your local craft store or online in larger quantities. Often it helps to start the children off with dry wool that you make shapes or whatever comes out of their hands by rubbing the wool together as the wool will felt itself due to the friction, then it’s all soap and warm water for as long as they will do it and it yields little items that they made themselves and perfect for indoor play. Now, this is a perfect activity for spring as water play and activities belong outdoors in our house and with the warmer weather and water, there is no better combination!

Finding a climbing tree to visit

I don’t know about your family, but our children instinctually want to climb everything, including me, the couch, the inside of a car seems to be the ultimate climbing course too. So, to satiate this need for climbing we go hunting for climbing trees and rocks on our walks. We all keep our eyes peeled and let the children trial and choose if they are suitable trees making sure they aren’t in someone’s garden. We have had favourites ranging from trees on verges to ones in bushland and at playgrounds. Rocks are more readily found around water bodies such as creeks, rivers, ponds, lakes and of course the ocean shore. These become a focal point for visiting and can really give their gross motor skills a good workout while giving your back, couch, and car seats a bit of a rest.

Sunset walk and picnic

As the sun in Spring is still setting relatively early, take your dinner to a favourite outdoor space, whether it is a park, beach or favourite bushwalk place letting the children play and eat till dusk falls. I have a few basic meals that lend themselves really well to this setting, such as quiches, slices, backed veggies, crunchy veggies sticks and dips, or at times a good cabanos and hunk of bread with buttermilk to wash it down. Most importantly their needs to be plenty of it. We always take water and if we are making it extra special some kombucha or water kefir. Kids sleep well after being outside during sunset into the early hours of dusk and evening.

Moon walk

Moon walks have been my occasional go-to when my babies or little ones are too restless to go to sleep. Though these special moonlit adventures might not be a good fit as a regular thing, it is a welcome change of routine when bub doesn’t want to sleep, or you just want to have a special moment with them going out looking at the stars and the moon. You could do this from your own home. If you are out on the balcony it is best done when the lights are out in the house. Whether staying home or venturing out on the night walk. I have always found wrapping up my little ones in their pyjamas and venturing out into the night quite a magical moment to share with your little one. Who knows what else you will see when you look up at the sky in the night, whatever it will be there is the amazing soothing nature of night sky gazing. At times it seemed that this soothing effect had mainly worked on me, but at least it helped me attend to my children’s needs with more calm and patience for that evening.

Hopscotch, elastics and skipping ropes

When boredom seems to strike as the flavour of the day, on occasion I have been known to offer my children the opportunity to clean the toilets if they are so bored they can’t find anything to do… never have I found them to find interest in something faster. But when you are feeling obliging and wanting to help children of different ages to get involved, these traditional games can be moulded into an abundance of outdoor play when the weather hasn’t become too hot. Though these games can be very structured, I often show my children how I used to play with them and then let them figure out their own way of filling their time with these old games. More often than not, I find the little ones playing balancing games on the elastics under a bench, or chair to hold it steady, mini mazes that they weave over and crawl under as if it were a spiders web or part of an obstacle course and lots of hopping and drawing circles and shapes with chalk. Naturally, if your child pulls up short on what to do with these things, setting an obstacle course with them and joining in the play for a couple of goes, sharing a laugh when it gets tricky and wobbly can help them find the initiative upon request to make another one that they can show to you when they have prepared it. Oodles of fun and awkward moments for the whole family. This one is especially good when there is more than one child and a good one for older siblings, cousins, or friends to get involved in too.

Snail races

After collecting snails in the morning dew, draw a circle on a paved area and put them all in the middle, which one will exit the circle first? Perfect for little ones that love creepy crawly things. We have then ended up making snail habitats and feeding them for weeks before re-releasing the said snails. The little critters had become quite familiar with my son’s arms and legs climbing all over him quite willingly. You may get the odd stray snail stuck under the table, so keep your eyes peeled for these slow runaways!

Den/cubby building

I don’t know about where you live, but here in Australia we occasionally get strong winds and our native gumtrees seem to yield their branches willingly during such events. I would not be surprised if I am known as the weird lady who goes walking with her children using the pram to drag large branches home with her. We have used them for making raised garden beds as well as branch cubbies, or dens as they are known in England. Slinging some solar-powered fairy light over them and a few large old flat sheets, a picnic blanket on the base and voila, you have yourself the perfect homemade cubby that can easily be dismantled and repurposed throughout the garden for borders, part of games and all sorts. The spring weather really lends itself to nice fairy-lit dusky moments in the garden with some tea. Children being involved in the acquisition and construction process, are far more likely to spend plenty of time reworking and enjoying their novelty cubby.

Hair trim or cutting in the garden

This may seem like a typical lockdown activity, but I am one of those mothers who has been cutting and trimming my children’s hair myself most of their lives. By chance one time my son noticed that his hair was being later picked up by magpies and we spotted which tree they were taking it too, which started a nest spotting adventure as well as checking on the progress and conversations on what else could be in the nest and how many eggs etc. So, now all hair is trimmed in the garden to see if any birds take it for their nests. Who would of thought hair trimming could lead to hours of bird watching and nest spotting?

So there you have it, nature-based, springtime activities making good use of the limited time our children have in their childhood to be children. As always, I hope you have enjoyed and maybe taken a couple of things as inspiration for your adventures with your little people.

Take care big people,

With much love and gratitude,

MaMa’T

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