Fairy Houses

Some activities just evolve when you send your kids outside to play. The other day, my children and their friends decided to build fairy houses. Eventually, they had built a whole fairy “resort”.

My part of the project involved nothing more than watching them out the window and letting them pull some leaves off of my Hosta plants. As anyone with Hosta knows, the plants will recover.

(I also watched with a blind eye as they picked some blossoms from my garden to decorate their little houses.)

Materials:

sticks

grass

Hosta leaves

rocks

flowers

pine-cones

acorns

whatever they can find

A perfect garden is nice. A child playing outside, using his or her imagination, is priceless.

(As is having a few minutes to yourself!)

So, next time your child complains that there’s nothing to do outside, suggest making fairy houses. My kids also love to build bird “nests”out of sticks. Who knows?  You may even be tempted to join them.

Creepy Compost Creatures

 

Uneaten, brown bananas are a source of guilt for me.  I always plan to make banana bread, but rarely do and the spotty bananas go straight into my organic recycling bin. 

A few weeks ago, I pulled out some toothpicks, raisins, mini-marshmallows, cloves and bay leaves and let my kids create creatures using bananas and apples as bodies.  They loved the project and I loved seeing the results.

Your creatures will not last long before you have to throw them in the compost, but this is a project that is all about the creative process!  Grapes would be fun to use as well and there are lots of interesting, spiky, funky fruits available at the grocery store these days.  To prolong their “creatures'” existence, have your kids draw them or take a picture of what they created!

This would be a great Halloween project!  Friends of mine have even done it on a larger scale, decorating pumpkins with greens and other vegetables, anchoring them with toothpicks and wooden skewers.  It’s a great excuse to visit your local farmer’s market!