5 Great Spring Lesson Plan Ideas

Girl with Sunflower

5 Great Spring Lesson Plan Ideas

Spring is in the air and it is time to get out some seasonal activities. We have put together 5 great Spring lesson plan ideas that will surely drive out any remnants of the winter blues, that might be hiding in your classroom.

1. Listen To Vivaldi’s Four Seasons

We like to play classical music as background music during quiet times in the classroom. It signals the need to keep the volume down and there is lots of research about classical music being beneficial to concentration.  Seems like a win-win idea for our Spring classroom.

2. Paint Spring Flowers

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Georgia O’Keeffe is known for her beautiful flowers. We let ourselves be inspired by her style and create our own art pieces. Her style is easily imitated, and even very young students can feel successful. You can learn more about it right here.

3. Make Potato Planters

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Potato planters are so much fun to make. All you need is large potatoes, grass seeds, soil, and decoration. You can learn more about potato planters right here.

4. Memorize A poem

There are many spring poems to choose from. We like to chart our poems and choral read until everybody has memorized the entire poem. This way your class will not only learn a beautiful new poem but also get plenty of fluency practice. You will be surprised how quickly your students will memorize even difficult poems. Once a poem is committed to memory, students work on projecting their voice and enunciation.

5. Sing A Spring Song

Spring makes you feel like singing. The birds are chirping, the bees are humming, and your students are tapping their feet. What better way than to harness all this energy and learn a new song! There are lots of beautiful spring songs to choose from.

 

STEAM Education Fibonacci Numbers

 

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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

~ Albert Einstein

Leonardo Pisano Bogollo, aka Fibonacci rediscovered the number pattern that is now generally referred to as the Fibonacci sequence. Fibonacci recognized that certain numbers seem to occur in nature more frequently than chance would allow. The number sequence is also used to calculate the golden mean or golden ratio, known in mathematics by the Greek letter phi.

You can easily calculate the sequence in your classroom or at home by adding the last two numbers to make the next.

Here is the sequence:

0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34…

The first two numbers in the sequence are added and the sum creates the next number.

0+1=1. 1+1=2 2+1=3 3+2=5

We usually open our Fibonacci math enrichment unit with posting the number sequence on the board as a challenge. We ask the class to find the pattern. Surprisingly enough even the first graders usually figure it out.

One of our favorite activities is to go on a Fibonacci number hunt walk. We take the kids for a walk and try to find natural items that show numbers in the Fibonacci sequence.

Here are some example from our last walk

Bougainvillea
Bougainvillea

The Bougainvillea shows three bright pink leaves.

This California native has 5 petals.

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We had to count a lot of petals to find a perfect daisy.

We wrote in our journals and drew some of the flowers after the hike. A great way to introduce kids to the Fibonacci sequence.