Tuesday was the first official day of Spring. It seems like it’s been forever, but really, there’s only 90 days between season changes, at least according to the astronomers. But winter when you homeschool can be rough! Though we aren’t as exposed to colds and flus, when mom gets sick, it can bring everything to a halt. And we tend to hermit during the winter, especially here in Canada. So when spring arrives, we want to get out and enjoy it.  Even though it’s early days yet, we went on a Spring Scavenger Hunt, to look for signs of spring.

What you need for the Spring Scavenger Hunt:

We took along coats and shoes (not boots!), gloves and hats, because it’s still quite chilly out, even if the snow is mostly gone. We also took along our clipboards and pencils, with our handy spring scavenger hunt sheet on the clipboard. And we grabbed our cameras so we could take pictures of the signs of spring we did find.

What would have been nice to have would have been our magnifying glasses and binoculars. That way we could have investigated things a little better. Also, we wanted thermoses of hot chocolate for after our walk. It was colder than I thought it would be in the woods!

What you do on the Spring Scavenger Hunt:

We went out along a trail through a wooded park near our home. It’s well maintained, year round, so I didn’t have to worry about washed out parts or storm damage. There was one section of the trail where a tree had been pulled out over the winter, and was leaning against another tree, but it seemed stable.

Along our walk, we looked for signs of spring. We found muddy puddles and patches of melting snow. We tiptoed across icy patches on the trail. We eye-spyed green things – a patch of grass here, a sprouting flower tip there. And we heard the song of the birds and the tap of a woodpecker. That’s a sure sign of spring right there!

As we came across each thing, we checked it off on our list. We looked up, down, and all around. We became observers of our environment, noting that the sky color had changed from winter blue to spring blue. We paid attention to the sound of water trickling, and that even the wind sounds had changed. The wind didn’t “whistle” anymore, but was gentler, even if it was still cold.

What we learned on our Spring Scavenger Hunt:

We learned that you have to look really hard this early to find any signs of spring. And that even though it’s officially spring, it’s still really really cold!! We noticed that the sunshine was warmer though, than it was in the winter. And the air smelled warmer, like spring.

When we were done with our Spring Scavenger Hunt, we’d only checked off about half our list. It really was too early to go out, but spring fever kind of made me a little crazy. After the walk in the woods, I took the kids out to the playground, while I walked with the stroller to keep the baby asleep. We were out all of two hours, and the majority of that was at the playground.

But it’s spring! And it was soo nice just to get out.

If you want a copy of my Spring Scavenger Hunt, you can grab it here!