Springtime Activities: terrarium, nature walks, spring books, and a big paper tree

hooray, it's Spring! It's still cold and not much has changed, but it IS staying lighter after dinner, and there ARE pink blossoms lighting up the trees! Reason enough to celebrate for me. :)

I haven't been taking many pictures of our springtime activities. Oops. For starters, we've been on a few walks. We talk about the Spring things we hear (birds chirping, frogs croaking) and see (blossoms on the trees, daffodils) and it's fun seeing Rowen aware of so much more this year.

First fun project: we built a terrarium!  I've had a bottle of soda (gifted to us at a potluck last summer- or the summer before?) that I finally decided to dump down the drain for this activity. We cut off the bottom, and I let Rowen scoop in the soil from a bag of potting soil. I let him poke his fingers in, count the seeds, drop them in his finger holes, and bury them. I shoved the bottle top back into the bottom (trickier than it sounds!) and we squirted some water in the top with a squirt bottle!

 tada.
I actually have pretty low expectations for this minute bottled garden. (radishes. they're the hardiest thing I could think of.) as Rowen immediately shook the heck out of it. We'll keep you posted! So far he's looked into it a few times a day. Hopefully something will sprout and grow into a learning experience!

 To bring a little spring inside, we decided to built a tree with some pretty pink spring blossoms. Ro did great with his kid scissors (finally, an art project he can get into!) but also did lots of tearing. He really liked using scotch tape to put the pieces together.

 I cut a whole bunch of shapes out of pink tissue paper (triangles, ovals, circles, squares and rectangles) which he identified, squished, and stuck in the glue.

 yay! (yes I know, the top is naked. He got bored, but lasted much longer than I thought he would! Maybe we'll add some more "blossoms" later.

 We went to the library and picked up some Spring books. This was much more effective than my pathetic attempt at St. Patrick's Day books. (Have I mentioned how much I love the library's online request system? I can request a bazillion books while sitting at home, and then they'll email me when they're ready. I walk it, pick them up off the shelf filed under my name, and check out. Saves SO much time and chaos!) Anyway, the biggest hit is "Kevin Discovers Spring" by Liesbet Slegers.