Spring Flowers

BOOKS: The first buds on the trees, daffodils popping up in the yard, sunny skies, and warm afternoons. Ahhh, Spring is here! Countdown to Spring! An Animal Counting Book by Janet Schulman is a favorite at our house. While my 4-year-old is now a master at counting, my 2-year-old is now trying to count to 10. So this little book gives him nice practice. Ladybugs, bunnies, chicks, and more -- this book has us counting all the springtime creatures and ends with one big Easter basket full of goodies for the animals.
ACTIVITY: Noodle Flowers
While this is not an exact correlation to the book, we decided to make spring flowers. First I provided my boys with construction paper on which I had pre-glued flower stems. Then, I asked the boys to glue on wagon wheel-shaped noodles for flower petals until they were happy with the look of their flowers. Then they colored the noodles with markers for some color. This was incredibly easy and kept the interest of both my 4 and 2 year old. You can easily add a math element to this by asking the children to count out the number of noodles on each flower.