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How to make a miniature garden

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how to make a minature garden

A miniature garden makes a wonderful child-sized space for some small world play. We’ve made dinosaur lands and fairy gardens before but here’s B’s version of what a back garden should look like.

Small world play gives children the opportunity to be masters of their mini universe. They can role-play situations they’re working on in real life, testing out different ways to handle things. They also get the chance to stretch their imaginations and be creative in their little world, exploring possibilities that just aren’t possible in the real world. It’s always interesting to sit and observe children engaged in small world play, to listen to the language they’re using and get an insight into what’s occupying them at this stage in their life.

Make a miniature garden of your own

Here are our miniature garden ideas

1. Choose a container. We used an ice cream tub for this little garden and have found under-bed storage boxes to be a good size for slightly bigger play worlds.

2. Prepare the ground. If you’re going to grow real plants (which is highly recommended by us as the children get to see their garden develop)  you’ll want to make some drainage holes in the bottom of your container – so it’s not going to turn into a swap. (That’s a landscape idea to try another time!) Then fill your container with soil. You can still play with your miniature garden inside, just sit it on a tray to catch any drips.

3. Add some landscaping. Use lollipop sticks and twigs to build fencing and make wigwams for your plants to grow up. Gravel and shells can be used for paths. Lids from food jars, tin foil or small mirrors can create a pond.

4. Get planting. Select plants which will stand up to some play and which will retain a miniature size. We like using grasses, which are fun to give a haircut, and easy maintenance plants such as houseleeks (semper vivum). B wanted something pretty too so she added a tiny viola.

5. Add some embellishments. You can borrow items from your dolls’ house to make a seating area, or make some chairs and a table using corks and pebbles. Use some twigs or wooden kitchen skewers and string to make a washing line or some bunting. When I was a child we used to use seeds placed in rows to make a vegetable garden. Let the children use their imagination and see what they can create.

If you make a miniature garden of our own will you share a photo with us on our Facebook page? We’d love to see what you create.

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Want more happy handmade crafts?

Our Happy Handmade resource is bursting with colourful and imaginative crafts and DIY toys that are designed to add even more colour and creativity to your home. With easy-to-follow tutorials and free patterns and printables, you can read, make, and start playing today! See more of Happy Handmade here.

Beautiful flower printing craft

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flower printing

Ever tried printing with flowers?

flower painting

Dip and print – it couldn’t be easier. The flower stalks were like little fairy wands, dabbing paint onto the paper.

flower craft ideas

Little finger prints make great stems too (and who can resist putting putting their hands in the paint?)

More creative ways to use nature to inspire learning

Fill your year with hands-on, creative learning inspired by nature. Click through to see our Garden Classroom resource and get your free Garden Journal.

garden activities for kids cta

Make a garden journal

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gardening with children

Gardening with children offers so many opportunities to learn. We love growing our own fruit and vegetables, even though our garden is small, so the children get to see where their food comes from and how seeds transform into something tasty to eat.

This weekend we’ve been working on making a garden journal.

garden project resources

We’re using a scrapbook for our journal and filling it with all sorts of information and pictures as we go through our gardening year – making a wonderful record of everything we’ve done, seen and grown. Here are some things we’ll be including:

  • diary entries of our progress: what we planted, when things began to grown, what we’ve been enjoying outside (giving the kids lots of opportunities to practise their writing)
  • photos and drawings of the plants and animals we observe
  • treasures stuck on to the pages such as seeds, dried leaves, seed packets
  • scientific and mathematical data on how high plants are growing and what conditions  they like

The journal is a collaborative project that everyone is taking part in and I’m making sure to keep it out, rather than stored away on a shelf, to encourage lots of entries whenever the kids see something they want to include. By mixing in writing, photos and pictures everyone can join in – whether they’re at the writing stage or not. We’re hoping by the end of summer – when if we’re lucky we’ll have enough produce for a harvest celebration – to have a beautiful record of all the fun we’ve had in the garden this year.

Are you growing anything with your children? Are you doing any linked activities to springboard the gardening into literacy, math, science or art? We’d love to hear your ideas.

International guerrilla sunflower gardening day

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Regular readers will know NurtureStore is teaming up with Have a Lovely Time to host a Sunflower Challenge, helping to raise funds for Compton Hospice. You can find out about the challenge here and download a free ebook full of sunflower activities including art, science and maths ideas. If you enjoy the ebook maybe you’d consider supporting the charity and making a donation?

And if you have any spare seeds or seedlings why not join in with some guerrilla gardening? Today is international guerrilla sunflower gardening day, so take your sunflowers out on the streets and get planting in your neighbourhood!

Scout your neighbourhood for a dull and dreary spot of wasteland and brighten it up with some of your sunflowers for all your community to enjoy. We have planted eight of our little sunflower plants on an old train embankment which we pass on the way to school each day, so we’ll be able to keep an eye on their progress.

And to complete our celebration of sunflower day, we have the pleasure of being joined once more by Zoe from Playing by the Book, with another recommendation for a wonderful sunflower themed story book to enjoy with your children. (You can find Zoe’s first story book pick here.) Oh, and Zoe reminded me to give you an update on our progress: our tallest sunflower is at 29cm so far – anyone beat that?

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Measuring Angels by Lesley Ely and illustrated by Polly Dunbar is a book so rich in ideas and inspiration it’s hard to know where to start. It explores bullying and beauty in sensitive and thought provoking ways and is accompanied by gorgeous illustrations bursting with joy and colour. This is a book that will leave you happier, more optimistic about life, and itching to grow your own sunflowers (if you aren’t already doing so !)

A young girl at school is unhappy because she has fallen out with her friend. Hoping for reconciliation the class teacher gets the two girls to work together on the class sunflower growing competition; there are not enough seeds to go round the entire class and so the two girls reluctantly have to share.

At first things don’t bode well.

“When I put soil in the pot Sophie frowned. She snatches the seed and shoved it hard into the soil! I frowned but nobody noticed.”

At the suggestion of their teacher the girls try talking to their floundering seedling, and this along with the help of some fantastic sunflower guardian angels made from paper and glue by the class ensure the blossoming of not only their sunflower but also the rekindling of their friendship.

Seeing the sunflowers all in bloom the teacher realises that measuring for the tallest actually misses the point – beauty and friendship can’t and shouldn’t be measured.

This story is told with real a ring of authenticity; perhaps this is unsurprising given that the author is an experienced headteacher! The well crafted story is perfectly matched by beautifully observed children and mood-liftingly zingy illustrations created by the very talented Polly Dunbar. Even if our sunflowers don’t go on to win Nurture Store’s Sunflower Challenge ;-) , at least the competition has given me a chance to discover this wonderful book I can’t recommend enough.

happily shared with Link and Learn

Growing sunflowers with children

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Wondering when to plant sunflowers with children? The answer is right about now! If you’re in the UK, or somewhere with a similar climate, you can start planting your seeds from the middle of March onwards. Sunflowers are great plants to grow with children – they’re pretty reliable and grow quickly and there are lots of science, maths and craft activities you can link in with them.

Will you join in with our Sunflower Challenge this year? We’ve teamed up with Have a Lovely Time to help raise funds for Compton Hospice and have a competition with fabulous prizes on offer for the tallest sunflower. Click though to our Sunflower Challenge page and you can find more details of the competition, where to get your seeds and how to make a donation. There is also a free ebook of Sunflower Activities you can download with lots of ideas for learning activities you can use.

I’m delighted with the support you have show the Sunflower Challenge so far and really appreciate the donations you have made to Compton Hospice. Today we’re joined by Zoe from Playing by the book, who is helping us get the Sunflower Challenge off to a great start by suggesting some wonderful sunflower-themed books that are prefect to read as part of the project. If you don’t already know Playing by the book, do pop over to Zoe’s blog because you will discover all sorts of wonderful ideas for making the most of children’s books through inspiring activities, art and music ideas.  Here’s Zoe with her first review for us of the perfect book to accompany your planting.

For my first review I wanted a book perfect to go with planting our sunflower seeds and so I chose To be like the Sun by Susan Marie Swanson, illustrated by Margaret Chodos-Irvine.

Hello, little seed,
striped gray seed.
Do you really know everything
about sunflowers?

My hoe breaks apart
the clods of brown earth,
but you do the real work
down in the dark.

Not radish work or pumpkin,
not thistle work –
sunflower work.
All the instructions are written in your heart.

So opens this beautifully lyrical book which follows a young girl over the course of a growing season as she plants, tends, enjoys and then warmly remembers the sunflower she grows in her garden.

The sparse, poetic text is great for reading aloud – its brevity and apparent simplicity makes it an engaging listen for younger children, whilst its imaginative language (“All these seeds – are you tired / of holding them up? / What makes them so heavy? / Is it light caught inside?” or “a sunflower seed / is smaller than a word”) will get older children thinking and asking questions.

I particularly liked the fact that the text is written as if the young child herself is addressing her seeds and sunflowers – putting the child’s voice at the centre of the story gives an immediacy and relevance to little listeners as they imagine themselves talking to their own seeds.

If the quiet, meditative text is something that children of all ages, and their parents will enjoy, the illustrations will delight and thrill them. Bold, bright and bursting with vitality, (just like a sunflower in full bloom), Margaret Chodos-Irvine has used a variety of printmaking techniques to create images that will almost literally fill you with sunshine. The graphic-design feel of the prints, uncluttered, precise and perfectly placed mirrors the text remarkably well – this is a fantastic example of a book where text and illustration combine in a way that I don’t think could be bettered.

We’re not alone in thinking this is a very special book indeed. Other reviews have said “exuberant“, “philosophical yet concrete“, “a delightful read-aloud“, “readers will be reminded of Eric Carle“, and “The circle of life, with its remembrance and hope, has rarely been presented more simply and eloquently“.

This is a sunflower book you should most definitely track down! My girls adore it, and I’m so glad the Sunflower Challenge gave me an excuse to get our own copy – this book is a keeper! Magical text, stunning illustrations and perfect for talking with your kids about the sunflower seeds you are growing together.

Click here for an Author Interview: Susan Marie Swanson on To Be Like the Sun, via Cynthia Leitich Smith’s Cynsations.

If you want to try printing with your kids here are some good tutorials and sources of inspiration:

  • Discover lino printing through the world of Edward Bawden, then create your own print and see it displayed on the London underground!
  • Soulemama’s lovely handmade stamps
  • More printing, this time from Bloesem Kids

    • And if you want some music to plant your seeds to, you could do worse than the slightly surreal (but sure to appeal to the kids all the more for that!) Larry’s a Sunflower Now by Peter Himmelman, or Here Comes the Sun by The Beatles or Sunflower by Beth Mclaughlin.

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    A big thanks to Zoe for teaming up with us in the Sunflower Challenge. Watch out for more book ideas from her on NurtureStore and over at Playing by the book. And if you need some tips on how to start your planting, have a look at my guide to planting sunflower seeds over at Ready for Ten.

    happily shared with Carnival of Spring Play ABCand123 and Link and Learn and  Science Sunday and Something for the Weekend

    NurtureStore