9 ways to reuse bottles and containers in the garden

Recycling makes great sense - not only is it all about making something for nothing, it prevents waste. The Fairy is regularly reminding me to 'reduce, reuse, recycle' (a lesson she has learnt from watching Bob the builder!). Too be honest, I'm not as good at recycling/ reusing as I could be (hence the reminders). So we've been trying extra hard to recycle and reuse things this month.

We made some mini green houses to keep our seedling sunflowers warm. I cut the bottom off - volia a tiny green house for free. Perfect for places too small for a real glass house.

We found some great ideas from other kids bloggers too,

What we do all day has some fab vegetable pots made from old containers. I love that they have a window so you can see the plants growing.

Teach beside me show how to make an elephant watering can - watering will never be boring again!

Playing in the garden is such fun. How about some pretend play with these juice cartoon houses from Red Ted Art- they are super cute.

Or scoops for the sand pit from Picklebums

Why not get active with a game of skittles from Domestic Goddesque.

Or milk bottle tennis rackets from Laughing Kids Learn.

I love this water wall from Sun Hats and Wellie Boots - it looks great fun.

Or how about a sprinkler from Housing a Forest.

Gardening in small spaces

Do you only have a small space where you can grow things? Never fear - growing things is still possible! We are very lucky to have an allotment but we also grow plants and vegetables on our balcony. Infact our crops on our balcony are often more successful on our balcony  than at the allotment as there are no slugs or rabbits to eat the plants.

This year we are growing sun flowers, tomatoes and strawberries. These all grow well in pots so are perfect for our balcony

Gardening provides a great opportunity for talking about what you are doing- digging, watering.

Talking about the difference between seeds and plants.

Looking at roots and talking about how plants drink.

Even if you don't have a balcony you can try growing some plants on a window sill.

We are part of :

*   The Usual Mayhem   *   Child Central Station   *   Housing a Forest   *   Rainy Day Mum   *   Growing Green Fingered Kids   *   Nature and Play   *   Fantastic Fun and Learning   *   Kitchen Counter Chronicles   *   Teach Preschool   *   The Educators' Spin On It   *   Kindergarten and Preschool for Parents and Teachers   *   The Fairy and the Frog   *   Let The Children Play   *   Little Illuminations   *   Early Play Outdoors   *   52 Days to Explore   *   Music Sparks   *   Milk and Cuddles   *   Teach Beside Me   *   The Pleasantest Thing   *   Making Boys Men   *   I'm a teacher, get me OUTSIDE here   *

Printing with flowers

I've seen other bloggers join in with Tinkerlab's bi monthly challenges and thought they looked quite fun. We decided to join in too. This one was flower themed.  One of the central aspects of the challenge is that is should be child led. So I asked the Fairy 'Shall we do some making with flowers' the conversation went something like this....

The Fairy 'I don't know, what can I do ?'
Me 'Anything',
The Fairy 'Anything....?',
Me 'Yup' ,
The Fairy 'Really really anything?,
Me 'yes anything',
The Fairy 'OK can we doing painting with them?,
Me 'Er... we can try!' So we did.

Who needs paintbrushes when you can use petals!

The finished pic

Daisy daisy..

We've had a few days away this week and have been staying at a lovely bungalow - with a garden! Perfect for enjoying the sunshine. There were a magnificent display of daisies growing in the lawn. As I have already posted 'The Fairy' loves collecting flowers.

These daisies were no exception.

Once collected they made perfect objects to manipulate and create with. 'I'm making a circle'

They also made a great surface to roll on

A perfect play time activity whilst the grown ups were eating breakfast!

Language focus

Vocabulary: pick, hold, daisy, grass, roll

CD plant protectors

Being a gardener you need to be an optimist - you plant things in the hope that they will germinate and grow. No mean feat with all the things that eat young plants on our allotment- not only do we have the usual slugs and birds, we also have rabbits and deer - its a wonder anything survives!.

After our bean crop was decimated, I decided I needed to take action. We looked at all the other allotment plots I could see CDs worked well to scare birds. So we visited the pound shop to buy some. I asked the 'The Fairy' if she wanted to jazz them up - she suggested making flowers.

Sorting out which colours she wanted where

Sticking

The finished product (don't look too closely at the bed below - most of the beans have already been eaten and the bed needed weeding when I took the photo!)

When is a wooden spoon not a wooden spoon?

When its a plant marker of course! 'The fairy' had been watching me make some plant markers out of wooden spoons and decided she wanted to make one too (I'm in the process of creating a play garden for her at our allotment, but that's a whole other post...hopefully I'll update here when there is more progress). 


The ones I made

Her much more creative one (painted to be a purple flower)

I helped by holding the spoon as she painted.

We then left the flower in a glass to dry (after 'The fairy' had painted her hands!)

Now we just need to varnish and plant it

Language Focus

Vocab: paint, brush, flower