An Early Spring Scavenger Hunt

We are all aching to spend more time outdoors as the weather starts to warm up and change. Hopefully we can soon ditch the boots and heavy winter jackets for some lighter outdoor wear! While we wait for the days to warm up, it's a great time to take children outdoors to witness the changing season first hand. Birds are out and chirping more often, and many animals are scurrying about, waking up from their winter haze in search of food.

It's a great learning opportunity to go on walks this time of year as nature stars to stir and become more active. We thought a spring scavenger hunt would be a great way to pay attention to the subtler signs of spring that otherwise might be missed. These don't have to be found all in one day, in fact, it would be better to take all of spring to spot everything on the list. Feel free to add or change anything on the list. You can even turn making the list itself into a craft project by getting the children to draw pictures on a poster-board of everything they'd like to spot.

An Early Spring Scavenger Hunt:

• Spot a Butterfly

• Spot 3 Different Kinds of Birds
• Find something naturally RED (flower, ladybug, leaf...)
• Find something naturally PURPLE (flower, butterfly...)
• Find something naturally YELLOW (Flower, plant, butterfly...)
• Spot a Puddle
• Spot Someone Else Enjoying the Weather ( jogging, biking, playing in a park..)
• Spot a Seed (acorn, helicopter, pinecone...)
• Find Some Animal Tracks
• Spot Some Green Grass
• Find a Wiggling Worm
• Spot a Bird's Nest
• Spot Some Buds on a Tree
• Spot a Squirrel or Rabbit
• Hear a Bird Song & Try to Mimic it
• Find Something Smooth & Something Rough
• Spot a Fluffy White Cloud
• Find Some Flowers Budding

We hope you find lots of time to get outside and explore nature using this scavenger hunt as a guide! Happy hunting!

5 Reasons Why We Love Ropes at the Forest School

The Forest School philosophy is based on nature-based learning in the beautiful outdoors! The natural environment provides numerous opportunities for exploration, while also helping to reduce stress, increase attention spans and foster healthy brain development.

The last few weeks allowed us to explore the forest as it goes through seasonal changes from summer, to fall, and to winter. You may have noticed in our Forest School Blog that we have had many adventures using ropes during play, but you might be wondering why.

Aside from being so much fun, using ropes during play has some amazing benefits:

1. Imagination. Our children enjoy playing games with the ropes, from crafting a rope web for climbing or swinging, to creating a rope pulley system, or even putting friends in “jail”! Ropes provide an outlet for new games and support a healthy imagination.
2. Building New Structures. We often use ropes to help build our tents – we hang ropes from the trees and can create a new structure every time we’re in the forest. The children learn how to adjust the size of the tent using different lengths of rope and tying ropes to different trees.
3. Fine Motor Skills. Practicing tying knots is the perfect way for children to develop their fine motor skills. Fine motor skills refer to the movement of hands and fingers, which also rely on gross motor skills such as strength in the arms.
4. Gross Motor Skills. Practicing climbing, balancing and bouncing on the ropes develops each child’s gross motor skills, which involve the large muscles of the body. Jumping over ropes and ducking underneath will also help build these skills.
5. Health and Fitness. Climbing, hanging, swinging…and sometimes even flipping…allow the children to participate in a healthy exercise, that keeps everyone moving, but most importantly, focuses on fun.

Every day we spend in the forest is full of new adventures. Our ropes help us explore, climb and build new things...and most importantly, the children love playing with the ropes!

Contact us today for more information about our Forest School program!

About Discovery Child Care

Barrie Based Discovery Child Care brings nature into the classroom and takes the classroom into nature, offering an environmentally aware foundation of early learning for children, from infants to school-age. We follow an Emergent Curriculum philosophy which means, your child will be provided with hands-on, play-based learning opportunities that will encourage active exploration, autonomy, choice, problem solving and plain old fun! Your child’s individual interests, abilities and needs will be considered when planning our indoor and outdoor programs. For more information, visit http://www.discoverychild.on.ca

Discovery Child Care Kids Play I Spy With Nature

The Kindergarten class at Harvie went on an “I Spy Scavenger Hunt” this week. They were given descriptive words, including “soft”, “green”, “bumpy” “long” and “edible” (which we learned means something we can eat) and they went off into the playground to find one thing each for each of the descriptive words. 

When the game was finished, we brought our collection into the classroom and created a giant chart where we categorized our nature items by description. 

We worked hard and discussed all of our items along the way and, when we were done, we noticed that some items could be described using many different words. 

For example, a purple bean can be long, soft, colourful and edible and a piece of bark can be brown, hard and bumpy! What a great way to incorporate nature, language, math and social skills into one super fun activity!




Discovery Child Care offers interesting and educational before and after school programs. Call us for a tour. We'd love to meet with you and your child! 705-733-2052