Spring is in the air and what better way to celebrate than with these Spring Equinox party ideas! Our Spring Vernal Equinox or Ostara celebration ideas are all about welcoming the long awaited arrival of Spring.
After an especially long, cold winter we are all more than ready to welcome Spring’s arrival. My kids and I decided that organizing a Spring Equinox party this month is the perfect way to gather with friends and celebrate Spring!
What is the Spring Equinox
The Spring Equinox is also called the Vernal Equinox. It occurs around March 20th or 21st in the northern hemisphere where we are located. There are equal amounts of day and night.
It is widely known as the Spring Equinox, or the first day of the Spring season. Common themes celebrated around the time of the Spring Equinox are fertility and regrowth of the Earth which is why we often see Spring decorations such as eggs, flowers, seeds and garden growing themes.
Ostara is another ancient name for the Spring Vernal Equinox. Here’s an interesting resource we used in our homeschool to learn more about the ancient history of Ostara explained to kids.
Organizing a Spring Equinox Party to Celebrate
My kids and I decided that we wanted to organize a party with our friends to celebrate the arrival of Spring. For family gatherings with our nature based homeschool group, we love to host gatherings by the creek on our property where we have a fire pit and lots of space for kids to explore, play games and run in the pasture nearby.
I used to get a bit overwhelmed and stressed out trying to organize the perfect party. Then I learned a few tips and tricks over the years to make party planning easier and stress-free. Now party planning is easy and fun, especially now that my kids are a little older and can help with the organizing!
Picking the date for our Spring Equinox party was easy since we wanted to host our celebration on or as close to the actual date of the Spring Vernal Equinox as possible. Since we had nothing else on our schedule for March 21st we decided that would be our day of celebration.
We recently had a morning homeschool project to learn all about the basics of party planning and creating an invitation. Big Sister had her notebook and recorded the rough draft of our party plan and invitation including the who, what, when, where, why and how.
Then we used my graphics editor program to create a fun electronic invitation that I could save as a Jpeg file and text to families on our invitation.
While we do love sending snail mail to our pen pals, making and sending an electronic invitation saved us time and money. Especially since the cost of postage stamps has risen so much! Texting our invitation also made it really easy for families to text us back with their RSVP.
Food and Drinks to Celebrate the Spring Equinox
What’s a party without delicious food to enjoy with friends! Since we are aiming for stress free party organizing, we decided a potluck was the way to go. This way everyone could share in the making of the food for the gathering of friends and celebrating the arrival of Spring.
Potluck
There are so many different dietary needs with our friends from gluten free, dairy free, vegan, vegetarian and specific allergies. It can be overwhelming trying to cater to everyone’s dietary needs when deciding what food to serve at a party!
With a potluck, there will be a bit of everything being shared so hopefully everyone can enjoy tasty food that meets their dietary needs.
When we host potlucks by our creek, I set up our portable camping dining table and put a pretty table cover on top (I collect handmade vintage table cloths that I find second hand). This table is where we have folks put their potluck food so families can nibble whenever they want.
A brilliant idea I learned from a friend’s potluck last year is to ask everyone to bring their own table settings and eating utensils. This way the host isn’t left with oodles of dirty dishes to clean up!
You could also provide disposable plates and silverware but the majority of families in our nature homeschool group much prefer to not use disposable dinnerware when possible and are happy to bring their own reusable supplies.
Tea Party
Up until a couple of years ago I had never thought of a tea party as a stress free activity, especially with kids! Then we were invited to a friend’s children’s outdoor tea party and I saw how easy it was. Plus, there’s something so magical and fun about tea parties!
The year before COVID started, we started organizing monthly Kids Full Moon Tea Parties at our house to celebrate the full moon. This was inspired by my kids participation in the kids Moon Club.
To gather the tea party supplies, I went to yard sales and second hand stores to buy inexpensive fancy china tea cups and saucers to use. These weren’t sentimental in any way and cost very little so if one was broken, it was no big deal.
We bought two of these insulated coffee/tea carafes to put the tea in to keep it warm. We set these up on the end of the picnic table so families can serve themselves as needed.
We put a pretty table cover on our picnic table by the creek and set out a china tea cup and saucer at each spot so guests can choose the one they want. We also have a china bowl of sugar, one with honey from our bee hives plus a creamer with milk from the local organic dairy farm.
I store the tea party supplies in these kitchen storage tubs so when our party is over, I load the dirty cups and saucers into the tubs. When we’re back in the house, all I have to do is fill the tub with hot soapy water and we quickly wash up the tea party supplies and let them air dry before packing them back into the tubs for the next tea party.
Simple Activities to Celebrate and Welcome Spring Equinox
Nature Walk
One of the things we love to do around the changing of the seasons is take a walk and observe signs of the changes in nature.
Since our Spring Equinox party will be outdoors by our creek, we can easily all walk around and look for signs of rebirth and regrowth in nature as we celebrate the arrival of Spring.
Outdoor Games
We love to play games as a family and we’re also a big fan of gameschooling in our homeschool. We have oodles of games and several books on organizing games for groups.
The two books we use to find creative outdoor games for kids are Play the Forest School Way: Woodland Play and Crafts for Adventerous Kids. The second book that we found at a local free library is Everybody Wins: 150 Non-Competative Games for Kids.
My kids were given the responsibility of organizing games for our Spring Equinox party. We made sure to not pick board games that required a table.
Instead we picked games that were interactive and perfect for a nature setting such as our favorite Find and Seek game cards with easy to read scavenger hunt prompts.
Campfire or Bonfire
There’s always something so magical and fun about sitting around a campfire with family and friends. The campfire offers warmth since our spring weather in Montana can still be a little chilly!
The campfire also offers the opportunity to cook over the fire outdoors. There’s always the traditional Smores that my kids love but there’s so much more you can easily cook over the fire!
Big Sister found the campfire cookbook on our bookshelf with lots of creative outdoor campfire cooking foods and is planning to pick some to try at our Spring Equinox party.
Nature Journaling
Sometimes when we host gatherings by our creek, we enjoy some group nature journaling. This is a fun practice to share together as we observe nature and create in our journals, often sharing our journal entries with the group at the end.
If you’re not familiar with nature journaling, here’s how to start nature journaling.
Big Sister and I use spiral bound artist sketchbooks. Little Brother is six and has been using this great kids nature journal that has helpful prompts and activities.
Seed Sharing
Spring has us thinking about gardening and planting seeds so my kids decided it would be fun to have a seed themed activity.
This is simple enough for us because we have tons of free seedling pots and an abundance of seeds to share since I started a seed library for our local community two years ago.
With our boxes of organized seeds from our seed library set up, families can take seeds to plant in their own gardens.
This is always a fun activity for families to look through all the different seeds we have to share and select ones they want to plant.
Seed Planting
My kids are organizing a seed planting station. Once families select seeds from our free seed library, they have the opportunity to plant them.
This is a great outdoor project since it can get a little messy scooping soil into pots. It’s perfect for a fun springtime activity!
My kids are organizing this activity station with seed pots, soil and small hand trowels. Then families can fill their pots with soil and plant some of their seeds to take home and sprout some seedlings for their gardens.
Decorating Eggs and Dyeing Eggs with Natural Dyes
Eggs are often a symbol of spring and rebirth so we love to naturally dye eggs in the spring. My six year old has been egg obsessed since he was a toddler so we don’t always reserve our egg dyeing and hiding for spring. We’ve actually been known to do this year round, because well, why not lol?!
It’s fun and easy to do, especially when outdoors and with a group of friends. Here’s a great tutorial on how to naturally dye eggs.
If you’re looking for a little less mess with egg decorating, another option are these fun white artificial craft eggs we found a couple years ago at the local craft store. They look like real eggs but they are artificial so kids can easily color them with colored pencils or markers with no mess at all!
The artificial eggs can be hidden for an egg hunt just like real eggs. My kids love them because they can keep hiding them over and over throughout the year and not worry about them spoiling like a real egg.
There are so many wonderful ways to celebrate the arrival of Spring. We are so excited for our upcoming Spring Equinox Party and getting to welcome the arrival of spring with our friends!
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