Guest Post | Fun Spring and Easter Educational Activities

Spring is here and Easter is right around the corner.  Birds are singing and flowers are blooming.  It's time to put winter activities aside and engage your little ones in spring and Easter educational activities. Need some ideas?  Here are two for you to try.  

Watercolour Flowers

Materials needed;

You will need watercolour paints, watercolour paper, some glue, a craft stick and some marker pens.  

Method;

Paint flower shapes using the watercolours.  Use this activity to practice making circles, triangles, straight lines, etc.  Have children associate visual colours with their verbal and/or written counterparts.  Identify, paint, draw and replicate common flowers found in your neighbourhood or from a book.  Replicate famous paintings of flowers such as Monet’s Blue Water Lilies.  Use Monet's Blue Water Lilies to explain impressionist art.   

Next, cut out the flower heads and attach a green drinking straw, coloured ice lolly or craft stick as a stem.  Do this with tape or glue.  Voila!  Celebrate Easter by decorating your flat with a handcrafted garden of flowers!  

Role Play Games

Role play games present an array of opportunities for spring and Easter educational activities.  Adapt game to the activity levels and space requirements at your disposal.  The Flower Shop and The Garden Centre are two game suggestions.  

The Flower Shop

Engineer scenarios in which the children are providing paying customers with purchased flowers.  If you did not create watercolour flowers, use plastic or real flowers.  Tailor the scene, setting and objectives to the age of the children.  Develop key skills in counting, math, money and manners in the role-play game.  The children can pretend they are shop managers running a till using play money.  Guide the children to count, calculate, give and receive money for purchases.  Children playing the customer role can practice their manners and conflict resolution skills.   

The Garden Centre

This is a role-play game that can be short or extend out over several weeks.  In the extended version, you will need to have soil, seeds and containers on hand.  The purpose of this role-play game is for the children to pretend they are running a garden centre.  First, they must grow product.  Growing products creates science-learning opportunities about the lifecycle of a plant.  

Opportunities include: 

Describe how soil is made

Explain how plants grow

Name the plant parts

Talk about how photosynthesis works

Explain how seeds germinate  

Provide the children with an experiential experience where they are responsible for feeding and caring for a living organism.  

This role play game can be adapted to suit a variety of age levels. Some examples include:

Build a sensory tub where children can experience the sensation of digging in soil, placing soil in pots and planting. Supply the children with whole carrots that they can place or “plant” in the pots.  

Brush up on plant science and engage the children in learning these systems, processes and terms. A Google search will provide the information you need should you be a bit rusty.

Once the plants are mature, this role playing game can evolve into The Flower Shop game above, where skills in math and counting are taught, practiced and reinforced.