Spring is a great time for learning…everything seems so new and shiny! After being cooped up indoors all winter (OK, we live in Texas so it’s not exactly that, but it feels like it!), there’s nothing quite like spending some time outdoors.
4 practical ideas for outdoor learning with children
Let’s get outside and learn from the world around us! So often we feel like we need to sit at worksheets and screens or sit in classrooms to learn, but we all learn best through hands-on activities, and spring is a great time for exploration!
Related: Outdoor Scavenger Hunts & Scavenger Hunts in Nature
All elementary school subjects have fun outdoors!
1. Outdoor hands-on math activity
The garden is the perfect place to tackle math. There are things to count, calculate and measure! In our case, we don’t have an official garden, but we do have a small flower bed in the front yard.
Gardening Math for Younger Children: Counting seeds and simple measurements perfect for budding mathematicians. Seeds must be planted at a certain depth. Children can use a ruler to create the perfect size holes. Then use this ruler to measure how far away another plant can comfortably live.
Garden Math for Older Kids: Calculating the amount of mulch needed is something I struggle with every spring. Asking my kids to do the task armed with a tape measure seems like the perfect solution! After they determine the amount we need, we can go to the garden center together and decide what type of mulch is the cheapest.
Related: Earth Day activities
2. Outdoor English hands-on activity
Let’s start a diary of the garden and its progress. We adapted this to include the nature around our home – the hiking trails, the lake, and the wildflowers!
See also: Diary created by children
We started by choosing a special notebook to draw and write regularly to stimulate creativity and practice writing skills! This book can be decorated on the outside and decorated on the inside for the child’s delight. It is their place that no one can tell them what to do.
Make a little time each day (or week) to sit outside and get some fresh air and inspiration. Younger kids may need some coloring prompts and older kids may need some privacy!
3. Practical outdoor science experiments
All of nature is one giant scientific experiment! It can be fun to narrow it down A LOT and pick something to look at specifically. The outdoor diary is the perfect place to record observations and results. Find science near you! Here are some ideas to get you started:
- What happens if a garden is watered every other day instead of every day?
- Will thinning out the plants result in a larger harvest?
- Do some fertilizers work better than others?
We studied how the same amount of rain affects different soil types. It was something we frequently notice on the trails near our home. It will rain very heavily, but the middle of the trail, which feels sandy, will not be muddy, but the ground near the plants on both sides is really wet.
Related: Simple Science Experiments
4. Hands-on outdoor art
One of our favorite things to do is paint rocks and use them outside. You could create painted stones to mark the different plants in the garden. We thought it would be fun to artistically arrange the rocks we found in the forest!
What I love about this activity is that it can be done almost anywhere and makes everyone smile who discovers it after we’ve gone.
What is your favorite springtime hands-on activity to study? Please let us know in the comments below!
Note: This article has been updated and is no longer sponsored.