Are you planning any Earth Day activities on April 22nd? Celebrated around the world, Earth Day is a great time to pause and reflect the impact you, your kids and your family have on the earth.
Last year we carried out an eco-audit of our play, looking at simple but effective ways we could align our activities with the ideas of reducing, re-using and recycling.
We’re joining in with the Earth Day Celebrations hosted by Mommy Labs and Greening Sam and Avery to bring you a blog hop bursting with ideas you can use to celebrate Earth Day with your kids. Have a browse around the blog hop at the end of this post to find ideas for art, crafts, games, activities and positive action your family can take to go a little greener this month. First though, here’s what the NurtureStore girls came up with as an Earth Day play idea: we grew an indoor meadow!
Earth Day activities: grow a meadow indoors!
What started out as a slightly crazy idea turned out to be rather genius and has been a huge hit with the children. We live on the edge of a city and have a small urban garden. We grow lots of flowers, fruit and vegetables in the garden – as well as running a School Gardening Club – but the one thing our house is missing is a lawn. We had a lawn in a previous home (and I have to say I don’t miss all the mowing) and we’re blessed with having excellent local parks on our doorstep, but, to celebrate Earth Day, we came up with the idea of grown our own  small world meadow – to play with indoors and out.
We started by filling a seed tray with compost and watering it. We wanted a meadow that was big enough for the girls to use as a small world play area but something which was small enough so it was very easy to bring inside.
 We measured out our grass seeds (according to the seed packet instructions) and sprinkled it over the compost – in horizontal and vertical lines to ensure good coverage.
 As we knew our seed bed would be too tempting for our pesky cat, we placed the seed tray in our mini greenhouse and waited for the grass seeds to sprout. The girls checked the seeds everyday and in just over a week they had begun to grow. And they grew and grew and grew until….
we had a beautiful, verdant meadow, which the girls have played and played with. It’s such a sensory little world for them to use – so green and wonderful to touch. It’s been next to our fairy garden for a while…
 until the dinosaurs moved in and the fairies fled to safety.
(This photo makes me laugh.I don’t know why the goat is so cross, but my husband says is looks like an episode of Lost.)
 And of course the miniature meadow has been inside too.  L especially loves to lie on her tummy and play here with her little creatures. She has the animals chat away to each other and sends them off for adventures in the tall grass. The meadow’s in need of a haircut now – time to bring out the scissors!
More Earth Day activities
How are you going to celebrate Earth Day with your children? Will you grown some seeds with your children, make a junk model toy, turn rubbish into plant pots? For inspiration take a browse through the ideas in this Earth Day blog hop.
This Earth Day celebration is brought to you by:
Mommy Labs, Greening Sam and Avery
Teach Preschool | Ready.Set.Read | Living at the Whitehead’s Zoo | The Outlaw Mom Blog | Rainy Day Mum | The Golden Gleam | Inspiration Laboratories | Nurture Store | Experimenting Mom | Kids Stuff World | Artsy Craftsy Mom | Creativity My Passion | Imagination Soup | Caution! Twins at play |Rockabye Butterfly | Explore Education | Getting Messy with Miss Jessy | Daria Music | Mama Smiles |Let’s Lasso the Moon | Reading Confetti | The Educators’ Spin On It | Kitchen Counter Chronicles | De tout et de rien | Our Feminist Playschool | The Wise Owl Factory Book a Day | Mommy and Me Book Club | Dirt and Boogers | Carrots Are Orange | Putti Prapancha | Toddler Approved | Imprints from Tricia | Smiling like Sunshine |
P.S. Did you download your copy of The Garden Classroom yet?
 
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Cathy, I LOVE this idea! It’s like bringing the earth inside your home in small bits
I’m sure we’re going to do this activity. Thank you for participating with such a heartfelt project!
Very neat idea.
Love the idea of using it for small world play!!
I love the indoor meadow. It’s so green and inviting to say the least. It’s a must do for me.
what a wonderful idea! Love the meadow!
This is so fun. I love that it can be brought inside. I have to say, if I mowed the lawn, this is how big it would have to be!! Luckily, I have a husband who loves his yard and will mow it anytime
Awesome! I love the angry goat, I might try this with some birdseed.
I forget to do this every year! Thank you for the reminder!!!
[...] Create an indoor meadow via Nurture Store [...]
[...] week our indoor meadow had a hair cut and became the indoor/ outdoor stage for a theatrical performance (which I’ll [...]
You know I love this Meadow, Cathy! It’s so awesome. My kids would have so much fun hiding their animals in it. Thanks for the inspiration and for everything you do for the Kids Co-Op!
[...] Earth Day Activities: Grow a Meadow Indoors {Nurture Store} [...]
[...] Earth day activities: grow a meadow indoors! (nurturestore.co.uk) Share this:ShareShare This entry was posted in Activities, Outdoors and tagged Black Kettle Farm, Black Kettle Nature Trail, CATS, Champlain Area Trails, Earth Day, environmental protection, film, Hiking, Movies, Pedal Power, Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us?, Whallonsburg Grange Hall by Katie Shepard. Bookmark the permalink. /* [...]
Incredible, I know my kids would LOVE to give this meadow a haircut!
[...] playing in an indoor meadow [...]
I’m loving this on so many levels – Earth Day, nature, small world play, science…I could probably go on!
[...] puppets on April 18th, 2012 Remember the indoor meadow we grew as one of our Earth Day activities? This week it has become the indoor / outdoor stage for a theatre production using shadow [...]
LOL, Lost! I agree with your hubby. I’m going to save this for a winter activity, and I might have to bring it to the library for our playdates.
Miss Courtney – taking it out and about would be fun!
my kiddos would love this! thanks for the inspiration
I absolutely love this post…and i see the Lost similarity lol! So much inspiration here! Thanks for sharing (and of course hosting!) with the Kid’s Co-Op!!
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[...] playground 46. A marble run 47. An incy, wincy book 48. A superhero peg doll 49. Your own doll 50. A meadow 51. A horse riding stables 52. Chocolate play dough 53. A weather station 54. Beautiful candle [...]
I love this. Such a cool idea. Since our yard is mainly dirt or wood chips, this would be a fun thing for us to make and keep outside, even — maybe as a science experiment to see how long it would take the gophers to eat the meadow up!
Ours stayed outside for most of the year, but it is very cool to be able to bring it inside to play too.
A great idea for indoors or to add a natural play area to a patio or deck.
A great idea for small world play thank you for linking up to Gardening Adventure
lovely idea. Do you reckon you could mix some wildflower seeds in with the grass seed?