After such a cold winter, March offers the first sightings and awakening signs of Spring. It is a time of rebirth, renewal, and new beginnings. With daylight savings beginning on March 13 and the arrival of the spring solstice on March 20, it’s a month bursting with change as Mother Nature begins to bloom and show off her colors after an unusually chilly season. We wish you a relaxing time to spend with your family over Spring Break from March 21st – April 4 and hope you may have time to engage with your children to enjoy some of these activities!
Learning Together Joyfully: Spring Sightings
As always we are attempting to awaken and maximize every child’s potential. With this in mind a highly beneficial activity you can do every day while reading to children, is to question them meaningfully to develop their critical thinking skills. When reading, encourage children to practice critical thinking at the analyzing, evaluating and creating stages such as the questions below. For example: ask them hypothetical questions; allow them reflective think-time and; have them provide evidence to support their answer. Engage children in the story by asking them to analyze different characters’ thoughts and attitudes. Through the use of open-ended questions, children are encouraged to think, analyze, predict, compare, and give opinions.
Share these spring books with children to celebrate new growth and all the fun that the beginning of longer and warmer days can bring. The books below should help children learn about seasonal changes and the resulting first signs of Spring. Remember, you can take this list to find these books at your school or public library or to your favorite book store to purchase.
1. Read together 📚
- In like a Lion, Out like a Lamb by Marion Bauer. In this rhythmic spring book March enters a boy’s cozy home like a lion, but soon the lamb brings forth all the glories of spring. This is a wonderful spring tale for children.
- Fletcher and the Springtime Blossoms by Julia Rawlinson. Fletcher enjoys the sunny weather and the warmth of spring. However, he stumbles across snowy flakes gently floating to the ground, and spreads the news of winter’s return to all his friends. Thankfully, Spring is full of wonderful surprises for Fletcher and his friends.
- A New Beginning: Celebrating the Spring Equinox by Linda Bleck. What is the spring equinox?. Have you ever thought about how other cultures welcome Spring? Do you know about the Spring/Vernal Equinox? This book explores Spring traditions from all over the world and how the length of daylight changes the seasons.
- Just a Walk by Jordan Wheeler. A young Cree boy named Chuck goes for a simple walk that turns it into a day of crazy adventure. Chuck encounters animals, fish and birds that lead him on a wild journey through their various habitats.
- Goodbye Winter, Hello Spring by Kenard Pak. As days stretch longer, animals creep out from their warm dens, and green begins to grow again, everyone knows—spring is on its way! Share this book before a class walk in early spring to notice nature’s signs of the changing seasons.
- Morning on the Lake by Jan Waboose. A young Ojibway boy and his grandfather set out in a birchbark canoe early one spring morning. Under the patient and gentle guidance of his grandfather, the boy gradually comes to respect the ways of nature and to understand his own place in the world.
- Spring Stinks: A Little Bruce Book by Ryan Higgins. When Ruth the Rabbit finds out that Bruce hates the smell of spring, she sets out to prove to him that spring is actually full of wonderful scents. Once children have enjoyed laughing at the sticky situation in which Bruce ends up, they could write about spring smells they enjoy.
- Worm Weather by Jean Taft. Join in the rainy-day fun, as kids splash through the puddles, affecting another weather enthusiast, a nearby worm. An imaginative and playful story, readers will love seeing the worm delight in the weather just as much as the kids. Children could write from the worm’s perspective about the joys of a wet and muddy Spring day.
- When Spring Comes by Kevin Henkes. This story contrasts the bleakness of winter’s end with spring’s promising arrival. The astute observations (“Spring can come quickly or slowly. It changes its mind a lot.”) and lively alliteration (“There will be buds and bees and boots and bubbles.”) are great. Encourage children to write their own alliteration as they think about words that begin that begin with the same letter.
- Spectacular Spring: All Kinds of Spring Facts and Fun by Bruce Goldstone. This collection of bright, close-up photographs and cheerful, informational blurbs covers a broad cross-section of topics related to Spring. It is a season of beginnings, from blooming flowers to active animals. People spend more time outdoors, days grow longer, and umbrellas pop open as the weather shifts from snow to rain. This book is Spectacular, indeed!
- Let’s Look at Spring by Sarah Schuette. If you’re looking for a non-fiction spring book, this is a great option. Simple text and full-page photographs invite students to talk about their own impressions of spring. Re-released alongside the new Capstone 4D app, certain pages link to online resources that feature things such as spring craft directions.
SONGS
- Learn about the month of March
- It is Springtime
- Happy Spring Equinox! (Science explained)
- Spring is here
- Spring is here
- Running in the Raindrops
- Drip, Drop Rain
2. Create together: Puzzles, Crafts, Drawing and Constructing 🧩
After months of snow, rain and cold the icy grip of winter is beginning to lose its hold. Spring is the season of new beginnings. Seeds and bulbs are sprouting up from the cool damp earth adding bits of colour to our day. The Spring equinox marks the moment when the sun shines directly on the equator and we experience an approximately equal amount of daylight to darkness. This year in the Northern Hemisphere where we live, the spring equinox happens on March 20th and it marks the first official day of Spring. After months of winter weather, the first day of spring is welcomed and is definitely worth celebrating.
- Read Muddy, Mud Mud and then Set Up a Mud Kitchen.- During Spring, children enjoy playing in the mud as it is a great sensory activity that encourages open-ended play and communication. Mud Kitchens don’t need to be fancy, all kids need is mud, a few pots and pans and their imagination.
- How to make a Mud Kitchen or everything you wanted to know about creating a Mud Kitchen
- Learn How to Make Mud Pie Play Dough that looks and feels like mud and how mud is used for building structures.
- Read Fletcher and the Springtime Blossoms by Julia Rawlinson and bring Spring inside – especially when the days are wet and cold.
- Collect flowers, pussy willows and cherry blossoms to bring inside.
- Teach your child the steps to arrange flowers.
3. Explore, Engage & Interact together 🌍
- Read Spectacular Spring: All Kinds of Spring Facts and Fun and then go on a walk to explore and find all the beginning signs of Spring around your neighborhood, park or along a nature trail. Look for:
- Budding of trees
- Spring flowers – sprouting bulbs, snowdrops, daffodils
- Dig in the wet dirt to find some worms.
- Jump in puddles or spot your shadows
- Print off these templates and go on a Spring Scavenger Hunt.
- Playing with shadows:
- Go for a walk on a sunny day with your children and play Shadow tag. They can come up with the rules but the main idea is to “tag” another player by stepping on their shadow.
- Help children learn about shadow science and that shadows are formed when an object, such as a body, blocks the light of the sun. Have them play in pairs with their shadow before they capture and draw it and then fill it in with coloured chalk.
4. Healthy Living: Movement & Nutrition 👭
- Enjoy an outdoor Spring Picnic. Pack up your lunch and head to the park, public garden or trail for a lovely picnic together.
- Create an easy to prepare lunch with children and pack a salad in a jar.
- Children can also assist in preparing cut up fruit, veggies and cheese.
- Spring is here – Sing and Move to everything Spring.
- View 5 Spring Yoga Poses or read about 10 Easy Spring Yoga Poses for Kids.
- Have children sing and move to the song Running in the Raindrops or Drip, Drop Rain
5. Reflect: Thoughts of the Day about Learning 💭
- Critical thinking is the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking. As children are continuously bombarded with information and images, it is more important than ever for them to be taught the importance of using logic, reasoning and creativity, to analyze questions, ideas and assumptions, and to validate the “why” in order to understand things and draw conclusions. This happens best when learners are actively involved in their learning rather than being a passive recipient of information. Need more information? Listen to this short video on Critical Thinking or read more about How to Teach Children to be Critical Thinkers.
BLOOM’S TAXONOMY – REVISED
