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Making a Fairy Garden

June 8, 2012 by Anna Ranson

Make a beautiful, magical fairy garden with your child to encourage imaginative play and story telling!

make a fairy garden with kids
This idea has been on our to-do list for a long time and finally, when the sun was still shining (remember that, UK folks?!) we had a go at making our own fairy garden for outdoor play times.
I actually bought the supplies for this while Cakie had chicken pox, as a special surprise for us to do together. She was thrilled to have another patch of garden to call her own (to add to her Play Garden and Vegetable Patch) and was particularly excited to have flowers to care for.
making a fairy garden

To create this fairy garden we used:

  • a half barrel planter
  • flowers and shrubs
  • a piece of tree trunk (from our Christmas tree!)
  • pebbles
  • soil
  • a ceramic bird’s house
  • toy fairies

She filled the barrel with soil, then we planted the flowers and shrubs to create hiding places and shade for the fairies to play around! 


We pushed the piece of our Christmas tree into the soil to make a pretend tree stump which can be used as a fairy meeting place.

Cakie then made a path way amongst all the elements using some small pebbles and added a few flowers from the garden for decoration!

Next we introduced some fairies to explore their new home!

Cakie wanted to give them a real house to live in so we found one more bird house from her 3rd birthday fairy party and it made the perfect addition in amongst the flowers.

Next stop, playing and storytelling! Cakie is very much into creative play at the moment and immediately set about making up a wonderful story about her fairy characters and the “evil queen” that they were hiding from. She has now told me that she’s taking away the toy fairies so that the real fairies can arrive!

The benefits of creating an outdoor small world play scene like this are that it encourages children to spend time outside, promotes imagination and creativity and leaves plenty of scope for adult/child co-operative storytelling.

Learning Links:

  • creativity: imaginative play using props and real objects to represent familiar elements, create characters, take on a role
  • literacy: oral storytelling, using storybook language when inventing stories
  • knowledge and understanding of the world: planting and caring for plants, understanding what plants need to survive

Cakie: 3 years 7 months
Pop: 2 years 2 months
Bean: 14 weeks


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Filed Under: Creativity, Fairies, Garden, Growing, Imaginative Play, Outdoor, Story Telling Tagged With: Outdoor Activities, Outside Play

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Comments

  1. Kristin says

    June 9, 2012 at 12:11 am

    Charming!

  2. Une pomme de plus says

    June 9, 2012 at 2:18 pm

    Cute!

  3. FoxSpecialtyServices says

    June 9, 2012 at 5:56 pm

    Super! I love that you have fairy birthday parties, too. She will have great memories of those

  4. Sharmayne says

    June 9, 2012 at 8:04 pm

    Great Idea !

    Groetjes Shar

    http://liefdevolledingen.blogspot.nl/

  5. Cerys @ Rainy Day Mum says

    June 9, 2012 at 10:16 pm

    YES 😀 – it’s another of those couple of years time moment for me 😀 – I love seeing what they are up to and think what T will be wanting to do with me in a couple of years time. THANK YOU (on tough days you make it brighter)

  6. themessymama says

    June 10, 2012 at 12:11 pm

    I love this idea – especially as we have half the bits we need already. We can learn about weeding as well, as our fairy garden is a bit overgrown and needs tending before the fairies can live there!

  7. MsXpat says

    June 10, 2012 at 1:58 pm

    Fit for a fairy princess :0)

  8. Rebekah says

    June 12, 2012 at 5:26 am

    This is so beautiful! Great for open ended play!

  9. Kylie @ Octavia and Vicky says

    June 12, 2012 at 7:35 am

    This is just gorgeous – though I think we’ll stay away from fairy play for a little while… the “Dummy Fairy” came today and took Miss 2.5s dummies away. Hmmm. It’s gonna be a rough week.

  10. Musing Momma says

    June 12, 2012 at 8:09 pm

    This looks like a blast! I love how it gives your daughter a chance to be creative and put her imagination to work. Awesome!

  11. Chrissy @ The Outlaw Mom Blog says

    June 13, 2012 at 12:14 am

    Both my little ones would love this! Such a great set up for their imaginations.

  12. Bosliefje says

    June 14, 2012 at 9:22 pm

    This comment has been removed by the author.

  13. Bosliefje says

    June 14, 2012 at 9:23 pm

    i love fairy gardens! I am making one this week 🙂

  14. Lyndsey says

    June 24, 2012 at 3:53 pm

    Fab idea, I’ve just made one with my daughter – just in time for the rain to water it 🙂

  15. Ramona says

    September 3, 2012 at 1:42 am

    very nice job you did there!
    Keep it up and please take more pictures.

  16. Anonymous says

    March 7, 2013 at 10:23 pm

    I thought your young gardeners would enjoy an gardening adventure, growing the TickleMe Plant (Mimosa pudica). Recently featured by the National Gardening Association, http://nga.bock.com/search.html?keywords=Tickleme+plant&Submit.x=39&Submit.y=18&Submit=Submit

    If you want to give your young gardeners an experience they will never forget, consider having them grow a TickleMe Plant. This is the plant that will close its leaves and lower its branches when you tickle it. They sprout in days and can be grown indoors any time of year. Just Google TickleMe Plants or go to http://www.ticklemeplant.com for information seeds and growing kits. This plant has turned many kids into plant and nature lovers. I know, because I grow TickleMe Plants in my classroom.
    Happy Growing
    Martha

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About The Imagination Tree Hello and welcome! I'm Anna, Mama of 4, early years teacher and play enthusiast from the UK! Click here to read more about me.

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