Happy Earth Day 2024!

Yes, it’s Earth Day once again! That means it’s time for our annual walk to look for signs of Spring and see what flowers and other nature items we can find. Pop your shoes on and let’s go! 🙂 Here are some things we found:

Our Creeping Phlox flowers are blooming and they are so beautiful! Here we have light purple…

Also white…

And possibly my favorite colors, pink and white.

Next we found a bush with red and pink flowers. (Sorry, I don’t know what kind of bush it is.)

I bet you know the name of these bright yellow flowers! If you said dandelions, you are right!

Oh, look who is hanging out and gathering pollen on this dandelion!

These tiny little wild violets are growing in our yard. Yes, all by themselves. We didn’t plant them.

Here is another pinkish-purple flower that grows all on its own too. It even grows up through stones!

Speaking of stones…look what we found in our driveway, of all places! Two Killdeer eggs! From what we read, it seems Killdeer often lay their eggs in not very safe places.

While we are talking about birds and their eggs, look what else we found on our walk.

Care to guess what’s hiding inside this nest? This is a Robin’s nest and look what a beautiful color their eggs are!

Here’s another batch of pretty white flowers.

We’re almost done with our Earth Day walk today, but keep an eye out for trees that have blossoms right now too!

I hope you’ve enjoyed going on this walk with us, but I hope you can take time outside to go on your own walk and that you will find all kinds of beautiful things in nature that will amaze you! 🙂

Looking For Signs of Spring

It’s that time of year again! 🙂 It’s time to take a walk and see what signs you can find that Spring is on the way! Now if you live in a place that has a lot of snow right now, I’m sorry! We are in Ohio and we might still get some snow, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we are done with snow for now!

We live in the country and I love taking walks around to see what new signs of Spring I can find. It gives me hope that one day soon it will be warm outside again! So what do you think you might find? Look for new flowers peeking up through the ground. Like our mini daffodils…which actually have a few flowers blooming now!

I even spotted this lone little dandelion. 🙂

Our trees are getting buds on them.

Our Daylilies are peeking through the ground and last year’s foliage.

And so is another type of lilies.

The ice cream store in a little town close to us is open again! 🙂 Watch for birds that are gone in the winter, but show up again in the Spring. We’ve seen Robins, Bluebirds and a Red-Winged Blackbird! Every time I see one, I get excited!

You will know that it’s almost Spring when the greenhouses open up again and this happens:

Haha! That has been me a few times in the past! 😉

The daylight hours are getting longer and this Sunday we will set our clocks ahead one hour for Daylight Savings time. (If you live in most states in the United States, it’s probably not your favorite thing to do.)

Do you love Spring? What are your favorite things to look for that tell you Spring is not far away? The sun is shining today, but the temperature and the wind are making it feel cold yet. But Spring is on the way, so keep your chin up and have fun looking for signs of Spring! 🙂

Making Super Simple Flowers

Yesterday it was raining and storming and so gloomy and today it’s cold and snowing! I think we all need something to cheer us up, so let’s make some flowers!

This project calls for some cardstock or regular paper, some sticker note flags, a large button for each flower and some glue.

The sticker note flags that I’m using I found at a Dollar Tree store, but you can likely find some in the stationery section of any big box store or an office supply store.

Only the pointed tip of these flags is sticky, but it’s not necessary to glue down the rest of the flag because they will be glued in place later all at one time. Pick the color of flags that you would like your flower to be. I went with yellow for my first flower. (Note: While I used colored paper, the flowers will show up brighter on white paper.)

Begin by placing the flags in a circle with the points facing out. These will be the petals of the flower. Overlap the square ends of the flags in the center.

Keep placing the flags until you’ve made a complete circle. It doesn’t matter that the center looks a bit messy because it will be covered up.

Glue a large button in the center and your first flower is complete! Feel free to decorate the rest of the paper as you like.

My second flower was made using blue flags on red paper. This time I laid the flags out opposite each other and they look lined up a little better on this flower.

I glued a yellow button in the center of this flower.

One more little trick you might want to try is to add another layer of flower petals before gluing on the button. I like using a different color of flags and trimming a little bit off the square end to make them fit on the flower.

And then add the button. 🙂

Your flowers could be hung up and enjoyed by the whole family or you could turn them into a card to share with someone special. I hope you’ll have fun making some colorful flowers and brightening your part of the world. 🙂

Fun Crayola Felt Flowers Kit

Welcome back to The Kids Niche! So glad you’re here! 🙂

Today I want to share a super fun felt flowers craft kit that I found at the Dollar Tree store. I thought it was a nicely done kit, especially for $1.25!

You can make 4 felt flowers from each kit. Here is what is included in the kit:

To get started, a few of the parts need to be punched out. They came apart easily for me.

I would like to suggest that before you go any farther that you take a couple of minutes to trace around all the flower parts on a piece of paper so you will have patterns to make your own flowers later.

Now for the fun part! 🙂 Each flower needs a set of matching flower pieces. 1 plain solid color piece and 1 plain solid color piece that has adhesive on the back side with a piece of white paper covering it.

Sort the pieces into 4 groups so you know which pieces you want to put together into 1 flower.

I started by putting the smaller flower piece with the face on it onto the front of a larger flower piece that has the white paper backing on it. Remove the paper backing from the face piece and press the piece onto the bigger flower piece.

Take the other matching big flower piece (the one without the paper backing) and lay it down on the table. Take 1 pipe cleaner and lay it on top of the flower piece for the stem of the flower.

Carefully remove the paper backing from the large flower piece that has the face on it, line the 2 big flower pieces up and press together. Once the adhesive touches something else, it doesn’t come back off very easily.

Last step is to remove the paper backing from one leaf and fold it in half around the stem to form a leaf.

That’s all that goes into making 1 flower. 🙂 Repeat the process for the other 3 flowers and you’ve finished the kit!

Aren’t they so cute?! I just love them! Find a small vase or glass to display them in around your house. 🙂 These would be cute flowers to help the kids make for mom or grandma, etc.

I hope these kits are available at your local Dollar Tree store! Happy flower making! 🙂

Happy Earth Day 2021!

Do you celebrate Earth Day? I hope that each of us is doing our part to protect Mother Earth every day! Here’s a fun activity to do with your kids to help them learn to appreciate the earth a little better. Take a walk together with your camera and see how many interesting things you can find in nature to photograph. Look especially for flowers that are just growing wild. Here are a few things I found on my walk:

A dainty little purple flower…

A bush blooming with beautiful pink flowers…

Tiny, tiny purple flowers growing in the grass…

New growth on a tree…

A beautiful bunch of dandelions…

Tiny white flowers also growing in the grass…

Pinkish-purple flowers, growing up on stalks, even in stones…

New growth starting on a large pine tree…

Buds coming out on another tree…

Teeny, tiny bird feather…

A beautiful blue sky with the newly budding tree…

There are so many beautiful things outside that we walk past every day without noticing. My hope for this Earth Day is for each of us to take a little time and truly look around and see some of the amazing things our wonderful earth offers us. Enjoy! 🙂