Katy @hotpinkwellingtons
🌤️Family Adventurers Come Rain or Shine
Mummy to Max and Ben
Lover of the great outdoors, gardening, photography, yoga, and opera singing ♪
Spring is one of my favourite times of year, and is all the more welcome after a very long and wet winter. I know both me and my boys are itching to get outside to enjoy everything that spring has to offer this year. Here are a few of our must-do spring family adventures for this year!
Go on a Bluebell Walk
Bluebell season is one of my favourite times of year, and we are so lucky in the UK to have such prolific bluebells filling our woodlands. A bluebell walk has become one of our family traditions, and I love seeing that sea of blue stretching out and winding its way through the trees. Just be careful not to trample the flowers, as flattened flowers and foliage mean the plant won’t bloom the following year. Stick to well trodden pathways, and don’t pick them!
Grow your own vegetables
I love introducing my children to where their food comes from, and they are both very keen gardeners. Spring is the perfect time to start planning some things to grow over the year. We have one raised bed, and this month we are in the process of building another two, so we are planning on growing carrots, onions, beetroot, courgette, tomatoes, strawberries and potatoes.
So many of these are really easy, so perfect for children, and if you aren’t lucky enough to have space for a raised bed, things like tomatoes, potatoes and strawberries can be grown on a patio in containers. There’s nothing like the taste of a strawberry, freshly picked from your own garden!
My boys can be fussy eaters, so we’re growing a combination of foods I know they love, and foods I know they’re not keen on, in the hope that they’ll be more willing to try things they’ve grown themselves.
Hatch Caterpillars into Butterflies
Learning about the butterfly life cycle and the process of metamorphosis is such a fascinating thing for children. We grew caterpillars at home last year, and watching them transform into butterflies was such a wonderful experience. We bought our caterpillar eggs from Insect Lore, and were able to watch them hatch into caterpillars, then turn into chrysallis, and finally emerge as butterflies. When you release them they can be quite docile and the children loved having them land on their hands.
Have an Easter Egg Hunt
An Easter Egg Hunt in the garden is something that we love to do! I set it up in the morning, and the children set off armed with their baskets, looking everywhere for the little coloured eggs. I’ve done it with lots of chocolate eggs in the past, but last year we moved to using coloured plastic eggs instead, for a number of reasons. Firstly it means that the children don’t end up with a tonne of chocolate to eat (we just exchange their eggs for a proper Easter egg at the end), secondly, it allows us to choose a special dairy free egg for my littlest, whose dairy allergy can often mean he’s left out of traditional Easter egg hunts. We’ve kept all the coloured eggs and will re-use them year on year.
Go on a Spring Scavenger Hunt
I think it’s so important for children to learn about the natural world, and I find a scavenger hunt is such a great way to motivate little legs to keep moving. There is so much to spot in spring – daffodils, blossom, bluebells, nesting birds, frogspawn, lambs. You can find loads of templates online, or you could make your own if you’re feeling creative!
I hope this has given you a few ideas to enjoy with your family this spring!
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