100+ Spring Activities for Preschool- Easy Ideas

A list of 100+ Spring Activities for Preschool- Easy ideas to enjoy the wonders of spring alongside your little learners. 

The Spring season is full of new life, flowers, sunshine, and warmer weather. Springtime fills me with excitement for more time outside and is always a welcome change from what can be an often dreary winter. (at least for us in the Pacific Northwest)

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There are many different ways to engage preschoolers with the outdoors in the spring. From outdoor activities to bringing nature indoors, and reading wonderful books about all the changes we are seeing and experiencing, Spring is a great time to delight in the natural world and engage in life-giving activities with your preschooler. 

Our Favorite Spring Picture Books (coming soon!)

Spring Preschool Activities

Activity Books

Dover Publishing Company makes some wonderful activity books for children. One of my favorite things is that the illustrations are beautiful and not cartoon-like. They also have engaging little sticker books that are a fun activity to take on the go to engage little hands. 

Dover coloring books

• Butterflies Coloring Book
• Garden Flowers Coloring Book
• The Flower Garden Coloring Book

Sticker books

• Fairyland Sticker Activity Book
• Petting Zoo Sticker Activity Book

Unit Studies

Spring unit studies can be a fun addition to spring lesson plans. Though I do not use unit studies as our core curriculum, I think they can be a fun addition to afternoons and provide beautiful ideas for preschoolers.

Here are a few beautiful options for Spring:

• The Peaceful Press: Spring Guide
• Wildflower Unit Study

You can find many more on Etsy.

Creating a Maker’s Station

​Structured arts and crafts are not my forte when it comes to activities with little ones, but I do love setting out an invitation for them to let their young minds be imaginative and come up with their own creations.

What is a maker’s station?

A maker’s station is an area where children are free to go and be as creative as they want with the tools provided. Having an easily accessible creative area is the perfect way to encourage independence, and imagination, while not having a high maintenance arts and crafts project always prepared. 

I have seen this setup at our local children’s museum and there is a nice explanation in the book Maker Camp: Heritage Crafts and Skill-Building Projects for Kids.

Initially, setting up a maker’s station will require some guidance from mom on what the expectations are for using the tools and cleaning up after children are finished creating. If you have a child who needs an inspiring idea to get them started on creating with their imagination here are a few suggestions:

1. Create something alongside them from your own imagination.

With just five minutes to dedicate to working alongside my children in a project, they can be off for hours creating their own version of the project. 

2. Books.

It is a great idea to have a bookshelf with a couple of books to inspire creativity. We like to put drawing books, nature craft books, and nature guides on this shelf for children to reference and be inspired by what they see other children making in the book. 

Here are a few of our favorites:

– Wild + Free Family Activities Collection

– 52 Nature Crafts Projects

– Maker Camp: Heritage Crafts and Skill-Building Projects for Kids.

The library is also a great resource to check out and rotate craft books that young children may be inspired by. 

3. Display project instructions.

An alternative to having a bookshelf available is to find a simple project online and print out the directions (with lots of photos) to make it. Display the project instructions at the maker’s station as an option for the child to make with the supplies on hand. You can even do an example with them to get your preschooler started. 

Here are a few inexpensive items that can be stocked in a maker’s station:

• Different colors of construction paper
• Pipe cleaner
• Pom poms
• Glue sticks
• Paper plates
• Tissue paper
• Acrylic paint
• Kid-friendly scissors
• Hot glue (for adult use)
• Cardboard
• Tape
• Plastic trays for painting and allowing projects to dry (or containing messy projects)
• You can include any amount of different items that you are comfortable with young kids using independently. I recommend only putting out an amount you are confident they can clean up pretty independently and storing the rest out of reach. 

Spring-themed Arts, Crafts & DIY

• Paper folding. Paper folding and origami can be a great activity to work on fine motor skills and shape recognition with preschoolers. Choosing a fun spring-related paper folding project such as making fake flowers or a kite is a great indoor activity for the more rainy days. 
• Spring sensory bin. Sensory bins are so much fun for preschoolers. 

How to make a spring-themed sensory bin:

Filling a bin with rice, beans, kinetic sand, or Play-Doh with a few spring items is an easy way to engage preschoolers in sensory play. One of my favorite spring-themed sensory bin ideas is to have a flower pot or two, dry pinto beans as the “dirt”, a small shovel, and some fake flowers for little ones to “plant flowers”. 

You could also do something as simple as adding a few toy bugs to a kinetic sand bin. They could even “plant beans” in the kinetic sand to create a garden. 

Choose something that doesn’t stress you out if it gets on the floor and have preschoolers help with clean up after the activity is over! They are way more capable than we often give them credit for. 

Here is a list of 50+ Life Skills for Preschoolers: Build Capability + Confidence that can help us parents expand our thinking beyond what we think our preschoolers can do and watch them grow in capabilities and confidence in our homes as they exceed our expectations.  

More Spring Crafts

Spring Play Dough

We love this non-toxic play dough recipe. The natural colors from food-based sources are wonderful for a pastel-toned, colorful spring play dough. We have these garden dough stamps and rollers that add a nice spring touch to play dough modeling.

Modeling letters with play dough is also the perfect opportunity for literacy activities. Using dough to form alphabet letters, form the letters into a sight word, and even stamping letters into the dough all are fun ways to work on language development in a gentle, preschool-friendly way. 

Make Play Dough Together

Making play dough is a wonderful way to play with color mixing and cooking. This combination is the perfect science experiment to do with your little one.

Watercolor Painting

We like the Let’s Make Art YouTube channel for painting projects with our children. There are many spring-related videos to choose from and bonus- I love painting alongside my children. The best spring activities are the ones I enjoy participating in just as much as my preschoolers. 😉

Coloring Easter Eggs

Coloring Easter Eggs is always a hit with our little ones. Adding a splash of white vinegar to the color mixtures can help give a more vibrant color to the eggs.

Spring Bookmarks

Create spring bookmarks as gifts or for personal use as you enjoy all the wonderful spring books together. A few of my favorite bookmarks to make with children include:

1. Hand stitched
2. Pressed flower bookmarks
3. Watercolor
4. Using stickers or stamps

You can also have children draw and cut these out to keep it super simple.

Use a hole punch at the top of the bookmark and add a nice ribbon for a finishing touch.

Flower Printing

Use flowers or flower petals to dip in paint and print on a piece of paper for a colorful spring art project. 

​Nature Stamping

Nature stamping can be lots of fun for little ones.

First, collect different colorful wildflowers and leaves. Then, with plain white tea towels, use a mallet to stamp the nature finds into the towel. The color and some of the shape will transfer to the towel and give you a fun design. 

Flower Crown

Creating flower crowns is a lovely spring activity that my daughters especially love. As a little girl I loved this as well. Scoping out beautiful wildflowers and twisting them together until they fit nicely around their head is an all-time favorite of these fun spring activities. 

Make Bird Treats

Making bird treats is simple and rewarding. With a small cardboard circle or pinecone, some bird seed, peanut butter, and twine, little ones can enjoy a simple craft while spending days watching the birds enjoy their little bird feeders. 

1. Roll the pinecone in peanut butter or spread it on a cardboard circle (with a hole punched through the top).
2. Dip in a tub of bird seed.
3. Add twine and hang your birdfeeder on a nearby tree.

Drawing

Opening a few drawing books to birds, bugs, flowers, leaves, and baby animals is a simple way to incorporate the spring season into the day.

Nature Journaling

Nature journal keeping is a core subject in our spring lesson plans. Giving preschoolers a small notebook and some paints while they watch the birds or collect wildflowers can be a fun way to engage with nature in the springtime. 

Birdhouse Building

Building a birdhouse with a kit or making it up with items you have on hand is a fun activity for engaging preschoolers (with supervision of course). Use paint to finish off the birdhouse and hang it somewhere they can observe throughout the season. 

Stepping Stones

Creating stepping stones out of concrete and different jewels can be a nice way to add character to your garden. They have basic kits for this or you can take the DIY route. 

Spring Garland

Create shapes such as a sun, flower, leaf, bug, or bird, out of felt fabric and line them along a string for a nice spring garland. 

Clay Modeling

Similar to play dough is clay modeling. Using air-dry clay for imprinting leaves and flowers is a great way to make trinket dishes and other gifts that preschoolers can give to loved ones. 

Indoor Spring Activities for Preschool

​We love rain suits in our home and puddle jumping, but for the extra stormy spring days, here are a few different activities to occupy children indoors in a way that is screen-free and life-giving. 

Seed Counting

Create a few sensory bottles with different beans and seeds. Use these as math manipulatives to work on counting and sorting. 

Singing Games

Teach children different singing games they can play with each other. Music, rhyming, and movement are always a hit with preschoolers.

Bubbles

Blow bubbles in the house. (This is a huge hit paired with some fun dance music)

Picture Books

Reading your favorite books about spring. You can see some of our favorites for spring at this post here (coming soon!)

Read Aloud

Read-aloud chapter books are also great for rainy days. I like to incorporate a read-aloud during meal times or teatimes when my preschoolers are occupied with eating their food and I have a captive audience. 

Play Farmers Market

Set up a basic farmer’s market pretend play scene for your little one. 

Write Letters to Loved Ones

Help preschoolers write letters to loved ones and grandparents about what they love about spring. 

Poetry Tea Time

Enjoy spring poems over tea. 

Floor Picnic

It can be even more special to move teatime or snack time to the floor for a picnic. 

Art Study

Look at beautiful works of art together that are inspired by the spring season. (flowers, parks, baby animals, etc)

Embroidery

Embroider flowers on napkins or cardstock bookmarks. Prepunching the holes and using a yarn needle helps make this activity more preschool-friendly without the use of sharp objects.

Special Study

Special studies are when we look at a specific area of study together to observe and appreciate. Here are a few subject areas to enjoy with your preschooler in the spring. 

A note that during the preschool age, we want to be careful not to be shoving their minds with facts about things, but just watching them together in a way that is enjoyable and observant. This is not about an in depth science lesson but participating in the wonder of God’s world with our preschool children. 

• Planting seeds
• Plant life cycles
• Butterflies (for a closer look into butterfly special study you can see what we did in the article here)
• Ant farm
• Flower pressing
• Nature calendar
• Trees
• Buds
• Squirrels 
• Birds
• Nests
• Eggs
• Bugs
• Bees
• Baby farm animals 

Outdoor Spring Activities for Preschool

Spring is the perfect time to get outdoors with young children. The sun is hopefully coming out more than it had in the bleak midwinter, and we are ready for some fresh air. Whenever we can during this season, we head outside.

Here are some of our favorite spring activities mostly done from our backyard. 

• Plant seeds
• Observing spring flowers and the life cycle of a plant (this happens just by noticing the differences in growth as we go outside every day, not a formal botany study)
• Mud kitchen play
• Nature study
• Bird watching
• Bug hunt
• Nature walk
• Family hike
• Flower arrangement 
• Spring scavenger hunt (send your children to find different items in the yard and bring them back to you)
• Spring bingo (there are many free printables out there for this)
• Puddle jumping 
• Search for rainbows
• Cloud watching 
• Putting out a hummingbird feeder
• Photography If you can give your child a little disposable or Polaroid camera, this can be a very fun activity to see what they “see” in the spring through what they choose to photograph.
• Shadow tracing 
• Bubbles
• Chalk
• Outdoor games
• Jump rope
• Backyard baseball/soccer/badmitton
• Picnic
• Rock hunting
• Walk to a nearby park

Spring Recipes 

Cooking and baking together is one of my preschooler’s favorite activities to do with mom. Baking with the flavors of spring can bring freshness and bright colors to our meals. This is also a great way to incorporate all of the five senses as our children engage with the spring season. 

Here are a few of our favorite recipes for spring to make together: 

• Small Trifle Cups (with in season fruit)
• Fruit Snacks
• Sourdough Lemon Berry Muffins
• Dirt cups
• Smoothies
• Smoothie Bowls 
• Pop Tarts (recipe coming soon!)
• Packing a picnic
• Make a Sourdough Starter (Include sourdough as one of the fun science experiments to try this spring. Watch as more and more bubbles form each day and include your preschooler in the process.)

Home Life

Spring is a time of cleaning and garden preparing at our house. Our preschoolers can come alongside us in this meaningful work during the spring season. The reward of participating with mom and dad, and appreciating a job well done is great for our little ones to have a part in. This helps build confidence and a sense of commraderie in our home. 

Spring Cleaning 

• ​Washing windows
• Sweeping
• Laundry
• Decluttering
• Mopping
• Wiping down walls

Yard Work 

• ​Raking leaves
• Pulling weeds
• Moving rocks
• Planting the garden
• Tilling
• Digging
• Washing cars

Family Adventures 

Family adventures are at the top of the list of our favorite Spring-themed activities. Sometimes we take these adventures with just our family but going with small groups or a co-op is a great way to enjoy the springtime in community. 

A few of our favorite local adventures:

• Hiking
• Visiting a public flower garden/tulip farm
• Visit a butterfly garden 
• Go to the zoo
• Going to the wildlife preserve 
• Helping someone with their garden
• Explore a pond 
• Visit a fish hatchery 
• Walk around the farmers market 
• Visit a greenhouse / nursery
• Visit local parks and observe the different nature their compared to your backyard
• Putt-putt golf or other outdoor sports like pickelball 
• Visit the beach
• Go to a local farm (sometimes they have baby animals during the spring)
• Local museums or children’s museums. We have a local children’s museum that always has lots of fun, seasonal activities to engage preschool and kindergarten students. 

What are some favorite ways you enjoy spring in your home? Please share in the comments below!