Fairy Small World

Wooden birdhouse decorated with flowers, glitter, and beads, in a sandbox with small steps made from pebbles. Text reads fairy small world

This fairy small world activity is an old one on our blog, but do you believe we still have the small world fairy house that we made many moons ago? I love that the small world fairy garden was a sensory bin activity using materials we had around the home, including our sand box! This is a great small world play idea for occupational therapy, because you can foster the skills needed by each child: fine motor, sensory, self-regulation, etc.

Using your sandbox as a space for a fairy small world is such an easy sensory bin idea. The dramatic play benefits that happens in a miniature fairy world is unlimited, especially when you use small things like sticks to create paths, or rocks to make fairy furniture.

How to make a Fairy Small World

While we used our sandbox for the sensory space, you could recreate a fairy world of your own in any sensory bin, around the base of a tree, or even in a potted plant. Here are sensory bin base ideas to get you started, if you go that route.

Once you have your place space in mind, you can gather other items to create a fairy small world:

  • Miniature house (this can be anything from a DIY fairy house made of leaves, bark, and seashells, to a store-bought fairy house)
  • Small items: feathers, leaves, gems, pebbles, sticks, acorns, etc.
  • Nature items: plants, pieces of bark, twigs, rocks, etc.

Create your fairy small world!

Set up your space and start playing. The possibilities are endless, and depending on your play space, you can make the fairy small world as elaborate or as simple as you like. We went simple and fun with our sandbox fairy neighborhood.

 
 
We made these sweet little fairy houses at Big Sister’s Tinkerbell Fairy Birthday party.  You can read the post and all of the party details here.  The fairy houses have been decorating our porch table since the party and involved in lots of pretend play activities.

 

 
 
Big Sister had the fairy houses in the sandbox one afternoon while the younger kids napped. 
 
She had her La La Loopsy dolls all set up with a neighborhood and all kinds of fun going on.
 

 

I added a few stones for sidewalks and Big Sister thought we needed more decorations added. 
We pulled a few potted plants from the porch and made our little fairy neighborhood quite pretty!