After sharing a massive list of spring bucket list ideas earlier this week, I thought it would be fun to share our family’s spring bucket list for 2026. From the adventures we’re planning (or already went on by the time I wrote this), the treats we’re baking, and the nesting things to springify our home.
This season, I involved the kids HEAVILY in picking the activities. They have a spring break coming up. We’re not really loving the idea of traveling right now, but a staycation sounds right up our alley. They are homebodies, like me, and naturally gravitate towards crafts, backyard play, and biking down our road. Let’s begin.
Adventures
First up, the big adventures. And by big, I mean leaving our small town and getting out of dodge for the day. Vermont is a fun place to live, and we don’t take advantage of many of the events and adventures in our state as much as we should.
Watch The Pond Skim
Every spring, many of the big ski resorts flood an area near their base lodge to create a massive pond and host an event where skiers and riders zoom across it, or attempt to, often in costume. I’ve attended pond skims in the past, and this year, the girls wanted to go. We headed over to the Killington pond skim and watched all the shenanigans. The kid’s favorite costumes were Ariel, a blow-up rubber ducky, and Maui.
Visit The ECHO Center
The ECHO Center in Burlington, Vermont, is a large science and nature center along Lake Champlain. We’ve never been. So this year, we picked up a discount pass from our local library and are trekking to the center for a day trip. Word on the street is there’s a new dinosaur exhibit. We’ll see how that goes since our youngest perpetually declares she is scared of dinosaurs and bears.
Attend Baseball Opening Day
There are a few college summer league baseball teams within a day’s trip of us, and our entire family loves going to the parks on a hot summer day. We’ve never been to a spring game before, but we’re attempting to attend opening day this season. Here’s to kids chasing foul balls with their sticky maple creemee hands.
Backyard Adventures
As a family of homebodies (minus Colby), we had to add a few backyard adventures. Our backyard is not your typical suburban backyard. It includes acreage, forest area with a brook running through it, a large meadow, hills, paths, and lots of gardens. There’s plenty of space for children to roam and explore.
Teach Bea To Ride A Bike
When Rowan was little, she learned to ride a strider bike. And boy would she zoom around on that thing. Then, at age four, she learned how to ride a pedal bike. Bea, currently at age four, has shown zero interest in the stride bike. But in the last week, she has expressed interest in bike riding and has asked to learn. Rowan, still the obsessive bike rider who does laps around our house, impatiently waiting to go on a family ride, has offered to teach her sister. This should be fun!
Make A Fairy Garden
Each spring, the girls and I make a fairy garden somewhere in the yard. They have a few fairy figures and accessories that we bring inside each winter, so each spring we recreate the fairy area. We build things from moss and sticks, sometimes sow some seeds, and create a little magical space for the girls to play.
Tap Our Maple Trees
Vermont is one of (if not the) top producers of maple syrup. Naturally, almost all of our friends and family tap maple trees, collect the sap, and boil it down to syrup. A dozen of our friends even have sugaring houses where you can hang out and tend the boiling sap. So we don’t need to tap trees and boil our own syrup, but we do it because it’s fun. The kids love it. Their favorite is drinking sap straight from the spicket. Oh kids.
Garden Things
The gardens are my favorite thing about spring. Except for when we get freak spring snowstorms (which we’re expecting one today…boooooooo). So naturally, we added a few things to our spring list for the garden, beyond our usual chores.
Plant Everbearing Strawberries In A Greenstalk
Currently, I have June-bearing strawberries planted in several garden beds. They grow well, but critters devour them before we can pick them. This season, I’m trying everbearing strawberries, which I ordered from MI Gardener, and planting them vertically in Greenstalk towers. Fingers crossed for better success.
Plant A Tea Garden
My daughter’s teacher introduced her class to a tea garden along with a variety of fresh teas in the fall, and she has been asking to grow a tea garden. The seeds are ordered, and most are sown indoors. Now we wait for some warm weather to start planting the tea garden outside.
Create A Kids’ Snack Garden
When I was creating my 2026 garden goals, I decided to make a kids’ snack garden near their play area in our backyard. I ordered a few Birdie’s raised beds to serve their snack garden needs, which should be arriving in early May. Just in time to plant their favorite cherry tomatoes, ground cherries, snow peas, cucumbers, radishes, and more.
Plant The Kitchen Garden
And by “plant the kitchen garden,” I mean plant the ENTIRE kitchen garden before the kids’ school year ends, and they are home for summer vacation. I’ve learned the hard way every single summer that the garden needs to be in maintenance mode by then. No new projects, no lingering planting. By the time they’re out of school, we’ve shifted to summer mode and spend our days by the river, bike riding, hiking, and being summer people. Gardening is relegated to the early morning hours before they wake up and the evening while they’re getting ready for bed with Colby.
Foodie Things
There are certain things that our family eats that are synonymous with spring. Like fresh-picked peas and anything strawberry rhubarb. Ahhhh…I could eat fresh-baked sourdough bread with strawberry jam all day!
Bake Strawberry Rhubarb Pie
Baking the first strawberry rhubarb pie of the season is like a gateway we traverse to springtime eating. It’s a favorite in our family, and we often make quite a few extra pies throughout the spring to freeze for later.
Make Strawberry Rhubarb Sauce
We’ve been in a make-our-own yogurt season, slowly making Greek yogurt in the crockpot. It’s been great to cut out single-serve yogurt and the trash they leave behind, but my kids miss the fruity mix-ins. We’ve been making our own and just ran out of their favorite, strawberry rhubarb sauce. I froze a ton of it last spring, and it lasted all winter. Now we’re not so patiently watching the rhubarb grow so we can replenish our stockpile.
Copycat The Starbucks Mango Cream Matcha
Sometimes, I bribe my kids to do errands with me with a Starbucks cake pop. Naturally, mom needs a treat too, and I am currently obsessed with their iced matcha with mango cream on top. It is delightful! I’m determined to learn how to make a copycat of the drink this spring. I’ve been working on it, and I’m getting close!
Make Deviled Eggs
We currently have an overabundance of eggs from our backyard chicken flock. They’ve been laying like crazy! Plus, we have more chickens than we need (chicken math struck again!). I need to do something with the extra eggs. Since my family (except for me) is deviled egg obsessed, I want to experiment with different recipes and see if I can find one I like too.
Homebody Activities
As a hardcore homebody, I would be remiss not to include a few activities to lean into this side of myself. Give me some cozy spring bedding with a book stack, and I’m good to go.
Switch Up Bedding
I LOVE our winter bedding. It took a few years of collecting heavy blankets, fluffy quilts, linen sheets, and perfect pillows but it’s perfect for us. The spring and summer bedding mix, not so much. I want to pick up (or make) a few new pieces for our bed for a spring refresh. Maybe a lighter quilt and bed blanket along with a springy throw pillow or two.
Tackle The Goodreads Spring Challenge
I’ve been a member of the Goodreads faithful for many years, but last year I leaned into their reading challenges, and it’s been game-changing. I read outside my normal box, discover books I love that I never would have, and have made reading a priority again. Right now, I’m a bit behind in their spring challenges, so it’s time to catch up. One challenge category is a marathon read (aka…super long book), so I’d better get on it.
Start Reading Poetry
I’ve never read much, if any, poetry, which is odd to me. I read pretty much anything except horror these days, so why not add some poetry to the mix?! I just picked up a few books from the Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets Series at Thriftbooks, and they are sitting on my nightstand ready to be cracked open. Maybe a poem a night?
Crafty Spring
Spring crafting is right up there with Christmas crafting in my book. It may even overtake it. And this spring is no exception.
Learn To Knit A Sweater
Rowan’s teacher has not only bestowed the love of tea onto her, but also of natural fibers. She’s been learning about the process of turning wool into knitwear and every step in between. This has absolutely ruined her wardrobe since she refuses to wear anything that’s not a natural fiber. Anyway, she wants to learn to knit, and I want to learn to knit a sweater. So we’re going to knit together. Her goal is to master the stitches. My goal is to knit her a sweater.
Sew The Girls’ Nightgowns
Similarly, both girls need new nightgowns and pajamas. Finding affordable 100% cotton options in their sizes has been challenging. I’ve picked up some fabric on sale, and it’s time to break out the sewing machine and make some spring-themed sleepwear for them.
Press Spring Flowers
The girls have been picking the first, small spring flowers that have bloomed. It’s been a long time since I’ve pressed flowers, but now seems like a great time to do it. AND teach them how to do it as well.
Make Pressed Flower Bookmarks
After the flowers dry, we want to craft some bookmarks with them. We’re always out of bookmarks in this house, and we’ve sufficiently raided the local library’s stash. It’s time we make some of our own.
Make Sunprints
We’ve long made sunprints every spring using this sunprint kit (Bella Luna Toys). But then I just watched the Renovation Husbands making cyanotype art using a kit (Amazon), and now I must try it. I like that you can make art in varying sizes and be more creative than with a sunprint kit.
Being A Kid With My Kids
One of the greatest joys of having children is getting to relive my own childhood activities. A few things we’re embracing this spring…
Fly Kites
We’ve been flying kites every spring and summer, but recently upgraded to much nicer kites from our local LL Bean store. No more disposable kites! We’re itching to take them for a spin down at the ball field on a windy day. Our yard is too hilly for optimal running through the field with a kite.
Upgrade The Bubble Machine
For seven-ish years, we’ve had a solid bubble machine. I thought it was a ridiculous birthday gift at first, but the amount we used it was unbelievable. But then last summer it broke. I replaced it with an ultra-cheap one from Target, and after just one use, it broke as well. I’m going back and finding a high tess one to bubble-cize our spring backyard time.
Visit Our Favorite Playground
There’s a playground in Vermont that feels like a massive, wooden castle. It’s one of the girls’ favorites, and we go there a few times a year for a picnic and a day of play. It’s on the list to take friends there with us this spring.
Earth Day Activities
Since Earth Day is coming up and sits solidly in the springtime season, why not add a few activities for the holiday?!
Participate In GreenUp Day
Each year, we participate in Vermont’s GreenUp Day. We pick up green trash bags from the local library and proceed to pick up trash along roadways and community spaces. We work in our area alongside our neighbors, and it’s mind-blowing how quickly we fill up our bags each spring.
Watch The Lorax
We also watch The Lorax together on the Friday night movie night closest to Earth Day. I love that movie, although it makes me irrationally sad and angry every time we screen it. Although the girls running around the house for the next week yelling, “I am the Lorax, you cut down my trees, I’ll break your knees,” is worth it.
Spring Cleaning
This spring, more so than any other spring of my life, all I want to do is clean and clean and clean. And declutter and declutter and declutter. I think we’ve reached a tipping point in our home, and it just needs a real solid reset.
Declutter Faster Than The Speed Of Life
Things I’ve asked my husband recently. One, “It’s possible to declutter and organize the entire house before the kids are on summer vacation, right?” Two, “It will just take me a weekend to reorganize all the sheds, right?” And, “Can we just burn it all down and start over?” His response…blank stares. But seriously, all I want to do right now is declutter faster than the speed of life.
Deep Clean My Car
Every year for Mother’s Day and my birthday, which falls in the summer, I beg and plead for a car detailing. I want no other gift than for someone to scrub the melted crayon from the cup holder in the backseat of my car. They declare that it is NOT a gift and proceed to gift me plants or breakfast at the local cafe. Thus, this year, I’m deep cleaning my car myself. Inside AND out.
Organize The Sheds
We’ve never organized the sheds. This spring, I’m going to try to come up with a plan on what goes where and start making it happen. No more where’s Waldo the string trimmer. This might be a summer project.
Pssst…Now tell me, what’s on your spring bucket list? Any nagging spring cleaning tasks? Springtime adventures? Or maybe it’s just setting up the hammock for a sunny day of reading under the trees? Share your ideas in the comments.
