April is such a beautiful month – the trees are leafing out, flowers are blooming, the sun is shining, and the world is waking up again. There are so many nature topics to explore this time of year!
Here are 6 nature study ideas for the month of April:
1. Caterpillars and Butterflies
Have you seen fuzzy caterpillars by you yet? We were excited to spot our first butterfly yesterday – a welcome sight! April is the perfect month to explore these incredible creatures.
Make the Butterfly Life Cycle out of Pasta
We love this easy and fun hands-on activity from Messy Little Monster to teach your students more about the life cycle of a butterfly. Get the instructions here.
Explore Butterfly Symmetry
Butterflies, like many other insects, have symmetry to their bodies, and even their colorful wings! Have your students explore butterfly symmetry with paint or markers. We love using this butterfly symmetry pack, but you could also just draw the butterfly’s body and the outline of one wing, and have your students match it to the other side.
Build a Butterfly Feeder
Making a butterfly feeder is easy, and you can make one using supplies you already have in your home. Butterflies live on an all-liquid diet, using a modified mouthpart, called a proboscis – like a drinking straw to suck up nectar. Your butterfly feeder must allow for a place for butterflies in your garden to land and drink.
First, gather a clean sponge, scissors, and a small dish. Cut your sponge into small cubes or rectangles, about an inch wide. Place the sponges in the dish and sprinkle them with a light dusting of sugar. Then, pour a tablespoon or two of water over the sponge pieces so that they are saturated. Place your finished butterfly feeder on a flat surface in your garden, preferably in a sheltered spot.
Raise Your Own Butterflies
Raising butterflies is a wonderful way to observe the butterfly life cycle firsthand. You can find caterpillars on common host plants like milkweed and parsley, and on trees like cottonwoods and willow, or order caterpillars online.
Place your caterpillars in a jar or clear container along with fresh leaves from the host plant you found them on. The caterpillars will need a lot of fresh leaves during this stage. As the caterpillars grow larger, watch as they molt and change.
As the caterpillars approach the final instar, prop some sticks in the jar to give them a place to hang and transform into chrysalides. Don’t touch them in this stage, but watch how they change, and get ready to see the butterflies emerge.
If you’re looking for a little something more to help you dig into nature study this spring, the Spring Journal is a great place to start. Your kids will learn about caterpillar types, metamorphosis, butterfly species, and more!
Our Favorite Picture Books about Butterflies
A Butterfly is Patient by Dianna Hutts Aston
Are You a Butterfly? – Judy Allen
Hello, Little One: A Monarch Butterfly Story – Zeena Pliska
Summer Birds: The Butterflies of Maria Merian – Margarita Engle
Where Butterflies Grow – Joanne Ryder
2. Morels and Wild Edibles
Wild edibles are popping up now in woods and fields… April is a great month to go foraging! Morel mushrooms, dandelions, red sorrel and fiddlehead ferns are just some of nature’s bounty you can go hunting for this time of year.
Make Dandelion Cookies
Dandelions have got to be the most easily available and abundant wild edible spring has to offer. The young leaves taste like spinach, with a hint of bitterness similar to arugula, and can be used as a substitute in nearly any recipe.
But I love this recipe for dandelion cookies because it uses the blossoms. If your kids like picking blossoms like mine do, send them out into the yard and reward them with cookies! (Only pick flowers you know aren’t treated with pesticides, fertilizers, or herbicides).
Go on a Foraging Walk
One of my favorite things to do when plants are popping up in the spring is to go on a wild edibles walk. In our area we have lots of lambs quarters, purslane, some morel mushrooms and of course – lots of dandelions.
We enjoy using this foraging log from the Spring Journal to record our finds!
For more, check out the spring foraging nature study in the Spring Journal.
Picture Books about Spring Foraging
Foraging with Kids – Adele Nozedar
The Children’s Forest – Dawn Casey
Mushrooms and Fungi for Kids – Ariel Bonkoski
3. Ladybugs
Ladybugs are one of the first insects we see venture out in the spring garden, and they are a welcome sight! Ladybugs have a similar life cycle to butterflies, in that they begin as an egg, a larva hatches, it pupates, and then it emerges as an adult. Like caterpillars and butterflies, ladybug larvae look nothing like the adult! Ladybugs are great to have in the garden, as they are fierce predators to garden pests (like aphids).
(You can even order ladybugs online, to release in your garden once the little green pests appear. Just make sure they have enough to eat before you order them.)
We love using this Ladybug Nature Study to explore ladybug species, the life cycle of a ladybug, ladybug anatomy, ladybug spots, and more!
Make Apple-Stamped Ladybugs
This activity from Made to Be a Momma uses apples as stamps to make ladybugs – what a great idea! You can find the instructions here.
Picture Books About Ladybugs
Growing Up Ladybug – by Stepanka Sekaninova
Are you a Ladybug? by Judy Allen
A Magical Loveliness of Ladybugs by Amy L. Stark
4. Tree Buds and Blossoms
The springtime budding trees and shrubs are a sight for sore eyes after a long winter! This year spring came early to Colorado, but most years we have a good 8 months where the trees are bare.
Take a Nature Journaling Walk
You can actually tell a lot about a tree by looking at its bare branches. The missing foliage allows us to see the tree’s shape (oval, umbrella, conical, etc), and different tree species have unique buds. Take a tree walk with your students and observe the buds of the trees you come across. Record what they look like in a nature journal.
This is also the time of year when many trees are putting out their blossoms – apple, cherry, crabapple, pear, dogwood, peach, etc. Blossoms are the flowers of stone fruit trees and other plants, and are an important food
source for pollinators such as bees, which drink nectar and collect pollen on their legs as they move from flower to flower.
Dissect a Blossom
Take a closer look by having your student dissect, or take apart, a blossom piece by piece. Use tweezers to carefully take apart your flower and place the pieces on a sheet of paper. Label the parts.
(We like using these blossom pages from the Spring Journal)
Picture Books about Spring Buds and Blossoms
When the Sakura Bloom, by Narisa Togo
Fletcher and the Springtime Blossoms, by Julia Rawlinson
Wildflowers, Blooms and Blossoms, by Diane Burns
5. Robins
There’s no more quintessential symbol of spring than the robin. With it’s bright blue eggs and “cheer up cheerily” song, the robin is one of the first songbirds to arrive in the spring. We’ve been lucky enough to have a robin build her nest right by our window (twice!), and we got to witness precious baby birds hatch and grow into fledglings – what a privilege!
Build a Nest
Have your student build a robin’s nest from scavenged natural materials found outside. First, gather twigs, grasses and a soft material, such as moss. Then, tease a handful of soft material into a round ball and, using your hands, mold and shape it around the base of an upside down cup. Add twigs and grasses in a circular pattern. If you wish, you can paint wooden craft eggs blue and place them inside!
Keep a Spring Birdwatching Diary
Keep track of the robins and other spring songbirds that visit your yard with this little free printable birdwatching log. (Print multiple copies of the bird tracking pages.) This would also be a handy little resource to take with you on a birdwatching hike or trip to your local nature area!
Free Printable Birdwatching Log
If you’re looking for a little something more to help you dig into nature study this spring, the Spring Journal is a great place to start. Your kids will learn about common spring birds, discover different nest shapes and types, they will build a nest, learn bird anatomy, and more!
Picture Books about Robins
Robins! How They Grow Up, by Eileen Christelow
This is the Nest that Robin Built, by Denise Fleming
Have You Heard the Nesting Bird? by Rita Gray
Robins: Songbirds of Spring, by Mia Posada
6. Rain and Rainbows
Spring is the season of gentle showers and rainbows, so it’s a great time to learn about spring weather!
Download this little rainbow printable for free here, and feel free to use it along with the below activity for a fun little rainbow unit. We had so much fun doing this activity over and over (trying out different color combinations, of course).
Make a Rainbow Activity
What you need:
- Absorbent paper towel
- Washable markers (Crayola is fine)
- Bowl of warm water
First, fold or cut your paper towel into a smaller rectangle, about 8″ long by 3.5″ wide (it doesn’t have to be exact). Have your student color a bit of one side of the paper towel in rainbow colors – red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.
Here comes the fun part: dip the colored section of the paper towel into a bowl of warm water and watch the colors move up the paper towel to create a rainbow! We did this again and again… and again. The best part about this activity is that most kids (elementary and up) can do this completely on their own. Win-win!
Check out The Spring Bundle for more spring nature studies!
Picture Books About Rain and Rainbows
Raindrops to Rainbow, by John Micklos Jr
Rainbow Science by Artemis Roehrig
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