Yes, I know that “April showers bring May flowers.”
At the moment, it’s still April.
At the moment, we’ve got a lot of April flowers.
Yesterday, on a walk, we started looking for different colors of flowers. (My goal was to slow my oldest down so we could keep up.)
Anyway, today, we decided to count all the flowers in our yard–and a few more around our neighborhood. It made for a good outdoor preschool activity. Plus, it kept us busy for at least an hour, including a short walk through our local area.
Any guesses how many kinds of flowers we found?
At least 40!
I didn’t take pictures of everything we saw, but we found 40 unique species of flowers. That included bulbs, weeds, and even trees.
That’s just the ones with buds, or blossoms, or in a couple cases, old flowers.
In our yard, we found: bluebells, forsythias, azaleas, purple violets, forget-me-nots, rosemary, daffodils, dandelions, cherry laurels, cherry trees, lilacs, holly buds, and rhododendrons.
Oh, and then there were the flowers you probably wouldn’t think about: pussy willow, hazelnut, Douglas fir, and big-leaf maple.
On our walk, we found so many cultivated flowers, as well as a number of wild flowers: tulips, primroses, camellias, candytuft, heather, yellow violets, and trilliums.
To that, we can add the strawberry and dogwood buds that will open soon. Then there are all the various weeds, and other flowers that I couldn’t identify.
Want to try this yourself?
Pick something simple:
- In the spring, flowers are just showing up, so they’re a great choice.
- During the summer, you can look for bugs or or birds.
- In the fall, try counting different types of trees.
- In the winter, look for twigs that are growing new buds. See how many different colors and textures you can find.
Looking for something more complex?
Find a leaf, and count how veins it has. Compare that with another leaf from the same tree. Compare those leaves with one from a different type of tree. Try this with flowers, counting the number of petals on a flower. Or with bugs, count their legs to see if they are an insect or not!
For older students, you can use flowers to introduce charts and frequency. Pick one theme (color, shape, type of flower, etc), and show children how to create a chart.
For example, count how many flowers there are in a particular color and create a chart to show that. Once the students have recorded their observations, compare the charts. Which colors are most common? Which ones are rare?
Interested in more nature-themed activities for exploring colors? Check out my picture book Can a Tree Be Blue, along with the resources in the activity packet below.
Have you ever stopped to count the flowers in your yard? What did you find?
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