Ideas for the Seasons: SPRING

Consider how you could explore the classic images of each season, and focus on using all of your senses. It should be a really rich and joyful main lesson!

Brainstorm ideas for the season of SPRING:

read The Magic Plum Tree retold by Freya Littledale and brainstorm images of Spring

read Mud by Mary Lyn Ray; mix all three primary colors together or a primary + secondary color to make a wonderful mud brown

read On My Beach There Are Many Pebbles by Leo Lionni; find smooth stones, mix a Frog Green, and paint Froggie Friends; mud kitchen play

read The Bunny Who Found Easter by Charlotte Zolotow (I like the one illustrated by Betty Peterson); draw bunnies using the free sample lesson in Drawing Simple Animal Forms by Live Education! grade 2 pkg

try Finding Nature's Greens

make magic flowers that open in water

watch Newborn Grey Kangaroo clip ("Amazing birth of a baby kangaroo" [3:26] on BBC Earth) from David Attenborough's The Life of Mammals

listen to "Kangaroos" from Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns; do "Kangaroos" activity from The Children's Music Studio: A Reggio-inspired Approach, page 135

read Pelle's New Suit by Elsa Beskow; wash and card raw wool

read Song of the Swallows by Leo Politi; sketch bird nests

make wet felted eggs

take a walk in the rain

read "A Tiny Apartment" on pages 30-31 of Animal Architects; mix hummingbird nectar and hang hummingbird feeders

read "Hummingbird" on page 7 of Creatures of Earth, Sea & Sky by Georgia Heard and "The Hummingbird" on page 14 of on the wing by Douglas Florian

taste strawberries; make paper strawberries

make a dandelion painting with paper towel rolls and Q tips

bake a Dandelion Maple Syrup Cake with Buttercream Icing

make May Day baskets

read "Summer Shower" by David McCord on page 73 of Talking Like the Rain: A Read-to-Me Book of Poems; write a concrete poem

read "A Spike of Green" by Barbara Baker, page 61 of The Hutchinson Treasury of Children's Poetry; find and draw a brand-new baby plant

Have each child chose a green colored pencil in advance ("choose a colored pencil that you think is the color of a baby plant") and then they each need to go outside and find a brand-new tiny baby plant coming up out of the soil. It has to be so brand-new that they are the very first person in the world to stop and see it! It's a great activity. Then sketch it and notice if the green pencil that you chose is the correct green for the color of your baby plant.

It is incredible to think that the Earth once was covered with nothing but fire and a barren wrinkled skin of cooled lava... and now it is covered in LIFE!

watch TED talk - The Story of Life in Photographs by Franz Lanting

look at his book of photography Life: A Journey Through Time

We will use this final Season study of Spring as a transition into a block on the Timeline of Life, not typically done in Waldorf schools but done in Montessori schools each year for ages 6-9 (as the Second Great Lesson).

It's a great topic!

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