Bugs, Baking, and Bikes: 9 Creative Spring Activities That Are Fun and Educational

Spring has sprung, and with it comes lots of opportunities to get kids involved in learning while having fun. The days are getting longer, and it's getting warmer outside, so there are chances to explore the outdoors and find some related STEM activities and life skills learning opportunities.

It's also a great time to clean your closets and bake up some new treats. Check out our great list of ways to sneak some learning into spring activities in ways that are fun for both kids and adults!

1. Start Spring Cleaning

The weather has finally become truly springlike in Chicago, so we're putting away our winter coats, hats, gloves, snow boots, and snow pants. As an adult, you're going to have to do this anyway, so have fun with your kids by having them try everything on before you put it away. If they don't like something anymore, or if it doesn't fit, then it's time to donate or toss it! This will help teach your kids about charity and decluttering.

Many municipalities have spring clean-up days where they accept large items, like furniture, appliances, and home improvement waste, during the spring months. If you've been thinking about a room refresh, talk to your kids about a new design and any new furniture items you're thinking about. To make it learning-friendly, have them draw their room layout on graph paper and cut furniture pieces out of different colored paper to fit within their room. This activity involves math and will teach them how to think about designing their own space in the future.

2. April Showers Bring May Flowers

Like much of the country, we've had tons of rain this spring. My son has fun measuring it with his weather center. This includes a rain gauge, a thermometer, and an anemometer to measure wind speed. My kids look at this every morning to see how heavy a jacket they will need to wear. They have also learned that wind impacts the chance of rain and the temperature. And they know that if we've gone a while without rain, they may need to water the plants!

In the Midwest, spring also means thunderstorms and tornadoes. Watch a local news channel or visit a website during one of these storms to learn what is going on, how meteorologists are tracking storms, and how your family can be prepared in case one hits your neighborhood. Have your kids pack an emergency bag to stash in the basement in case a tornado happens during nighttime hours. When spring storms pop up, we also have a guide of indoor activities for kids to enjoy.

3. Plant a Garden

STEM learning abounds from growing your own stems in a garden. If you have space, plant flowers, bushes, or even tree saplings in your yard. Have your kids help you select what plants will go into each bed. Teach them about what kind of sunlight you'll get in each section of the yard and what kinds of plants might grow best there. This will likely need a trip to the garden center, where you can teach them how to ask about what would be best for the space you have. You'll also need to talk about how often and how much plants need to be watered to stay healthy.

You can also teach both plant science and nutrition by planting a vegetable garden. Tomatoes are easy to grow in most areas of the country. Cucumbers, zucchini, bell peppers, jalapenos, and sugar snap peas have also been winners in our garden. In more temperate climates, you can try growing fruits, like strawberries, raspberries, or even cantaloupe. Just be aware of how much space each plant will take up.

4. Look for Bugs

Lots of preschool and early elementary kids love looking for and finding bugs. Pill bugs (aka rolly pollies) can be found in abundance under bricks and stones in the rainy spring months. Earthworms and cicadas also make their way out of hiding during this season. Get a magnifying glass to take a closer look at creepy crawly creatures. You can look up more information about anything your kids are interested in, or even scared of, to get all of the facts.

5. Start a Compost Heap

Starting a compost heap combines the garden project and the bug-seeking project! You don't need very much to get started. Just find a composter, preferably with an open bottom, and layer dirt, plant-based food scraps, and leaves to make a parfait of organic materials. Make sure you water and stir the pile every week or so to encourage decomposition. It doesn't take very long to start seeing your banana peels and melon rinds start to break down. With those, you'll find you get lots of worms, rolly pollies, and flies. Ours even attracts hummingbirds.

Teach your children that the compost pile works faster if food scraps are cut into bite-sized chunks, and that you can't include cooking oils or animal materials unless you want to attract rodents. You can keep lots of these food materials out of landfills and help create a healthier environment!

6. Visit a Farmer's Market to Learn What's in Season

Produce at the grocery store will always be the same, but visiting your local farmer's market will give you a good idea of what is in season and fresh! In our area, spring brings rhubarb and peas, which aren't the most exciting for kids, but other regions get strawberries, artichokes, pineapples, and apricots. Kids can talk to actual farmers who can tell them what harvesting is like and what the coming weeks will bring. Most know how many more weeks they will have each fruit or vegetable.

7. Learn to Bake with Seasonal Fruits and Vegetables

Rhubarb is weird because no one knows what to do with it — except making strawberry rhubarb pies or crumbles! Fresh spring carrots can also be an ingredient in a fun baked good like carrot cake or carrot muffins. Lots of people also associate lemons with spring, and there are many fun recipes, like lemon cake, lemon meringue pie, and lemon bars.

Baking is a great way to teach many skills, including reading and following directions, adding fractions, and the scientific method. My kids love trying to find out what went wrong if a recipe didn't come out just the way we thought it would!

8. Take a Walk and Learn from Nature

Spring is a great time to start exercising outdoors. Take your kids to a local forest preserve or park to enjoy time outside and get your step count up. Along the way, look for nests, flower buds, mushrooms, or other natural phenomena that occur mostly in spring. You can even take a walk in the evening and look at the night sky to see constellations. It's warm enough now, and the sun still goes down early enough to get in a few astronomical lessons before bedtime.

9. Ride a Bike

Once school is out for the summer, kids will want to ride their bikes around the neighborhood. Spring is the perfect time to teach kids to ride a bike. Practice in a baseball diamond where bikes will get enough traction to ride smoothly, but falls will hurt less. Teach your kids about bike safety, the rules of the road, and how to properly lock their bikes so that they will be prepared for bike trips when summer comes!

The image featured at the top of this post is ©S.Borisov/Shutterstock.com