Although I love winter(I am a skier), I am SO VERY MUCH looking forward to the return of my beautiful and colorful flowers  to return to my gardens. Daffodils are starting to sprout through the surface as are some of my tulips. Color is slowly starting to take hold in the lawn and I eagerly watch for budding on the trees. To me, flowers always make me smile!When I retired from teaching I created a teacher garden. Teaching themed chimes hang from shepherd poles and I have a wonderful lilac chair(my favorite color), a gift from the school on my retirement which sits at the top of the garden so I can see and take in all the flowers as they show off their colorful splendor. Thought you might like to share with your students some cool facts about...DIRT. 
We walk over it all the time. It gets onto our shoes and gets tracked into our homes.We really don't think much about it, do we?  But, just what is dirt? As Leonardo da Vinci once wrote, We know more about the movement of celestial bodies than about the soil underfoot."  Check out  "Get the Dirt on DIRT!" at my website for teachers where I recently posted some fun facts on dirt.

http://www.gailhennessey.com/index.shtml?dirtfacts.html

Gail