A Play Scene All of Her Own

Immy was quietly busy in her playroom earlier this week and I peeked in to discover her creating her very own play scene – a fairy garden.  She had laid out a green scarf (we keep a box of coloured scarves in the playroom) and was collecting and arranging all sort of bits and bobs to create a play scene all of her own – fake flowers, coloured fairy stones, other stones, feathers, ‘jewels’ …

fairy play scene

…and fairies, of course!

fairy play scene

She had even placed a piece of blue paper (re-purposed from a previous farmyard play scene) in the garden as a lake and begun to make a fairy boat. The only part we played in this creation of the whole play scene was Dad 101’s suggestion that he place some tape on the base of the boat so that her arrangement of items would stay on board as the fairies played.

fairy play scene

The blooms with long stems make perfect fairy umbrellas because fairies can’t fly if their wings are wet! (You knew that, right?)

We keep a collection of open-ended materials in the playroom and art space and having free access to these resources provides space for a preschooler to use their imaginations and create. Open ended resources have no defined limits or restrictions in terms of their use, they literally can be used in hundreds of different ways. Consider a collection of smallish, flat stones. They could be played with as food to be cooked in a pretend kitchen, as pretend money, as scrap for diggers, as seats or stepping stones for plastic figurines, as adornment for playdough creations or sandcastles, to weigh things down so they don’t tip over, for patterning, they can be transformed with a permanent marker to become a playmate, to tell a story or to play with words, and they are a fun challenge to stack. And that is just what I can come up with late at night, off the top of my head 🙂

Simple open ended objects are cheap and easy to source and store (check out this previous post for a list of suggested materials) and are perfect for play scenes. In fact, they are perfect for all sorts of play!

Do your include collections of simple, open ended objects for your children’s play?

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10 Comments

  1. Kate @ Puddles and Gumboots says:

    Oh this is so adorable. Reminds of the fairy homes I used to make when I was a little girl. I would pick every flower I could find in Mum’s garden and arrange them as homes for the fairies. Needless to say my mother wasn’t hugely impressed with me regularly denuding her garden of flowers lol

    1. I love this story, Kate 🙂 We really do need more flowers in our garden as I can just imagine Immy doing the same thing!

  2. How wonderful…I remember being enchanted by how my daughter (now 12) would play like this…picking up scraps of fabric off my work room floor, using sticks, bits of string, whatever she could find… hehe it was a good excuse to leave a few things laying around on the floor 😀

  3. What a magical scene, kids have such wonderful imaginations….my daughter is really getting involved in imaginary play, what an amazing time!

  4. What a gorgeous playscene and how wonderful that your daughter came up with it herself. I was just wondering if you could tell me where you got the fairies from and whether they are plastic or ceramic? I’m after some fairies to add to our playroom and have my daughters birthday coming up. Thanks, Emily

    1. The larger ones are plastic and are part of the Schleich range, they are great. The smaller ones are porcelain or ceramic, purchased from a fairy shop and they chip really easily so I wouldn’t actually recommend them.

  5. My fairy loving girl would love to come and play with Immy and her delightful fairy scene she set up. Hours of fun to be had there. So delightful.

  6. Margaret Elvis says:

    Christie I have some lovely seashells. Would they be of any use to add to Immy’s collection of ‘bibs and bobs’? Do let me know.

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