Hi, I’m Laura - the founder of Wellie tots, a brand new preschool class focusing on gardening, nature and everything outdoors.
I was overjoyed to be asked to share a couple of ideas with you all to try and keep your little ones occupied during this difficult time. As a mother of two small children myself, I know how hard it is to always be thinking up new activities to grab your child’s attention. I hope you find these ideas helpful, engaging and fun, using things you have lying around the house.
Activity 2- Create a fairy garden and watch it grow
Going for our daily walks is something we all look forward to at the moment, but sometimes keeping your little ones entertained on these walks can be a challenge. By collecting things to use in your fairy garden during your walk, your children should find it exciting and be more engaged with the nature around them.
This activity will also teach children about seeds and what they need to enable them to grow.
What you need:
A fruit container- any will do
Things collected on your walk (pebbles, cones, flowers, leaves, sticks etc)
Fill your empty fruit container with soil, just over half full will be enough. If you have any grass seed or cress at this point, you could scatter some of these seeds on top. These should be very easy and quick to grow so your little ones can watch the progress each day (don’t worry if you don’t have any - the fairy garden will still work without this).
Using one section from an egg box, make a small hole at the bottom and fill with soil. Plant any seed you have in here, e.g. sunflowers, a vegetable or herb seed. Water all your seeds so they are just damp, you don’t want to over water these, and place the egg box somewhere in your garden.
When this seed has started to grow, you could then move this outdoors to continue to mature.
Make a small pond/river for your fairy garden using foil and place this on top of the soil along with a few pebbles or stones that you have collected.
Be creative! Add flowers, cones, leaves, stickers...... you really can use whatever you find to add character to your fairy garden. We decided to make a fence and fairy door out of lolly pop sticks for ours.
I hope you enjoy getting creative with nature and this has provided some inspiration for you to use over the next few weeks.