Looking for signs of SPRING....

It's been raining a lot lately... and we finally had a sunshine-y day on Friday.  I took my second grade students out to the playground area, armed with magnifying glasses, so that they could look for 'signs of spring.'

A tree just beginning to show 'buds'....  Sorry it's so white-- I took a photo right into the sun! 

The sun was shining too bright... but, one of the tulip leaves had pushed through the decorative bark when it was growing and it still had it on the tip of the leaf and the kids loved that little detail.

They loved the tiny little blue flowers and the magnifying glass came in handy.

This tree had lots of 'flowers' on it and it was a great example to show the children that 'not' all flowers look like typical flowers.

The green fence is the end of the playground property and the base property is just past the fence.  We have a lovely view of an old Italian church and the snow on the Italian Alps... or the Dolomite Mountains.

Some more flowering tree buds.  Huge playground area... but, they aren't able to play in this area, for now, because it's just too muddy from all the rain.  However our school has tons of playground equiptment for the students to play on.

I'm sure that once these trees fill out with their summer leaves that we won't have such a pretty view of the mountains?

Lots of snow on the mountains because when we get rain... the mountains get snow.