The Imagination Tree

Creative play and learning for kids

Making a Fairy Garden

by

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


New here? Sign up to receive each new post via email!

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Comments

  5. Cerys @ Rainy Day Mum says

    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

    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!

  9. Kylie @ Octavia and Vicky says

    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.

  14. Lyndsey says

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

  16. Anonymous says

    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