Something A Little Bit Magical

It all started when a small group of girls were dancing and fluttering about the playground, spinning around in graceful circles and flapping their 'wings'. They were playing fairies. I jumped upon the chance to extend their play and later gathered the girls together to find out all about fairies. After much discussion we concluded that we would make two fairy gardens (because fairies love beautiful gardens) - one for the real fairies on our deck outside and one for themselves in home corner so that they might play fairies.

The girls had lots of ideas about what a fairy garden should look like so I asked them to draw their ideas:

Once we had finished we looked at our drawings and I asked "What do all your drawings have in common?" We noted that everyone had drawn flowers, mushrooms and fairy ponds and so we made sure our fairy garden had these three things.

We started with the outdoor garden:

We then read a range of fairy stories that the girls had bought from home and used the illustrations for inspiration when decorating our home corner. We made flowers, butterflies and a fairy pond filled with blue and green glass pebbles - a beautiful garden in which the children could role play and imagine themselves as fairies.

Throughout this project the children were engaged in collaborative decision making and problem solving. They had the opportunity to practice the skills of negotiation, speaking and listening in a group situation and valuing the ideas of others all the while, stimulating their imagination and having a great deal of fun!

"Creative play is likea spring that bubbles up from deep within a child. It is refreshing and enlivening. It is a natural part of the make-up of every healthy child. The child’s love of learning is intimately linked with a zest for play. Whether children are working on new physical skills, social relations, or cognitive content, they approach life with a playful spirit."

- Joan Almon