This morning while lazing in bed in true Sunday morning fashion I came across a tweet from Nicola who blogs at Multicraftingmummy.  She had tweeted a link to a recent post she had done for MumRx. (I love Nicola’s blog, we blog about similar things, have similar aged children and she lives along the east coast of Ireland too, so we’ve lots in common.  She has tonnes of fab arts and crafts activities for younger children and well worth checking her blog out!).  She had written a post about miniature gardens.  As a child I loved making miniature gardens and for years I have been making them with the kids I have taught in school and while we have created several “small worlds” at home, I’m not sure why I hadn’t thought of creating a mini garden with my kids before this.

The post captured my imagination immediately and I hopped out of bed, marched Doodles and Oodles downstairs, ushered them out onto the patio for breakfast and got them to shovel Shreddies into their mouths as quickly as possible so that we could get busy with this activity.

We spent about 15 minutes scouting around the playroom and garden for bits and pieces to use and set to work!

What we used:

• a tiny inflatable paddling pool (we typically use this on the beach)
• shop bought compost
• grass cuttings (Mr G cut the grass last night sp there was still some loose grass lying around that the mower hadn’t picked up)
• twigs
• a bowl of water
• flowers
• pebbles
• pinecones
• an old bird house
• small plastic figures including Smurfs, monsters and Fireman Sam!
• plastic animals
• as the day went on they added lots of bits and pieces including Spiderman’s motorbike!

What we did:

• We filled our mini paddling pool with the compost – usually I use a tray or cardboard box or window bow for this activity – any container will do.
• We poured all of our bits and pieces out onto a rug so that we could see what we had collected for our project.
• Doodles filled a blue bowl from the paddling pool and dug a little hole in the compost and placed the bowl in for a pond.
• Oodles placed stones around the perimeter of the bowl
• They stuck twigs into the compost as trees and tucked the little bird house in among the twigs.
• D had been playing with a Dracula figure from Scooby Doo and decided that he need to include a graveyard in his garden for his monster.  After all, every garden needs a graveyard, right?!?!?  He even buried a figure and placed little headstones made from pebbles to mark the graves!
• Have of the garden was covered with grass cuttings and O spent ages pretending to feed her toy cow and sheep with the grass.
• They even went back inside to see what else they could use and emerged with a wooden railway bridge from a toy train set.

They had so much fun trying to design and build their garden and even more fun playing with on and off throughout the day.  My parents popped in to say “hi” during the afternoon and the first thing D and O did was drag them over to take a look at their “garden”.

This was such a lovely and creative way to kick start our outdoor Sunday fun.  I highly recommend that you give this simple but imaginative activity a try over the summer hols! Thanks so much to Multicraftingmummy for the inspiration!

Let us know if you try it out – feel free to share your photos and posts on our Facebook page and I know Nicola at Multicraftingmummy would love to see what you have created too!  Check out her blog here and her Facebook page too!

Ciara x