Ideas To Inspire
Every summer we go camping and spend days, weeks and even months outside playing in nature. And every summer my girls and their friends build outdoor habitats for the magical, mysterious creatures known as fairies. They will spend hours find items in nature that can serve as ‘beds’, ‘tables’ and ‘food’.
We encourage magic and mystery with the kids while they are in their natural surroundings. Imaginative play through constructing outdoor fairy houses from natural materials such as bark, sticks, stones, flowers, grasses, acorns and pine cones; along with small pieces of trash they find around the camp site like bottle caps, broken sunglasses, pieces of plastic. We use this collection time to have conversations with our mini architects to talk about preserving nature and not littering. We talk about how harmful it is to birds and water life when people don’t properly dispose of their garbage.
When building a fairy house think about all of the possibilities: such as creating a pebble path, making a fence out of sticks, a walnut-shell bathtub, leaf hammock, a bark bed or a stone table.
You can do this in your own back yard, at a playground or even in a container filled with dirt on a balcony of an apartment. You need only to get outside, take a walk, carry a bag or a bucket and collect things. Bring back the found goodies to the place you will construct and begin the process to create a welcoming home for fairies.
Want more ideas? Check out these books – they are some of our favorites:
Fairy House: How to Make Amazing Fairy Furniture, Miniatures, and More from Natural Materials
Getting kids outside and teaching them about insects is an important part of childhood. Encourage kids to not be afraid of bugs. Exploring safe creatures such as the Pill Bug or Rollie Pollie‘s as most kids call them is a great way to start young explorers off with insects. Kids can learn about the stages of a bugs life from egg to adult. They can also do a bit of research at their local library after a day of outdoor play and learn that Pill bugs are actually not insects, they are crustaceans. They are related to shrimp and crayfish, breathe with gills, and need humidity or moisture to survive.
With this knowledge they could build a Rollie Pollie habitat to study and observe these creatures.
Share nature with kids while they are young and you will create, in them, a life long love of the outdoors. This is important to cultivate future scientists, conservators and explorers along with naturalists and artists inspired by nature.
Insect habitats teach kids so many life lessons. Ants demonstrate the importance of working together. Praying mantids teach children about the food chain. Butterflies exhibit the beauty of metamorphosis bot to mention lessons in biomimicry. Bugs and insects make ideal pets for children who cannot own larger domesticated animals due to allergies, housing restrictions, or family finances. There are many prefabricated habitats available in the marketplace, but parents and children can also build their own. Check out this bug mansion:
Many children in this country have lost all understanding that they are part of nature and are connected to nature.We live so fearfully that children will be nabbed or will get hurt that we keep them inside and away from danger. But ultimately we are harming them far worse by robbing them of the experiences that can only be found outside in nature.
“To become stronger adults, kids need to be outside and allow their bodies to do what they’ve been designed for from the beginning. – Kacie Flegal, a chiropractor in Ashland, Ore., who specializes in pediatrics.
In college I studied Ornithology because I was obsessed with the film maker Peter Greenaway. His film A Walk Through H: The Reincarnation of an Ornithologist change my view of birds, film making and visual experiences.
Some of Greenaway’s other best-known films include:Â The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982), A Zed & Two Noughts (1985), The Belly of an Architect (1987), Drowning by Numbers (1988), and his most successful (and controversial) film, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) also include references to Ornithology, birds and nature.
As a parent this has me thinking about sharing a love for birds with my children and if I want to get them outside to listen more I can start with the sound of various songbirds. Doing this can really can teach a child about the diversity of the natural world.
Once you spend time outside listing for birds why not get creative? Set up an outdoor creativity studio where you can build and make things! Go grab these Free plans to build a birdhouse for your own back yard from Ana White
ADDED BONUS:
While building your bird house listen to some classic music inspired by birds.
