Easy peasy small world play

small-world-header-square
My four year old daughter loves all kinds of sensory play. In particular, she loves playing with sand, but we don’t have a sand box in the back yard for her so when she does get a chance to play with it she enjoys it even more. This small world is a fun project that she and I made together using a small wooden tray as a mini sand box with some extra bits and pieces we had floating around the house. This was a spur-of-the-moment activity that was not planned at all, we just needed something to do on a week day afternoon so I hunted down some suitable accessories and grabbed a bag of sand that we had stored in the garage and Miss K and I set to work building the pretend world.

 

small-world-1
You will need:
• A tray (does not have to be wooden, you can use any tray including a baking tray or disposable foil tray)
• Sand
• Accessories for the world can just be whatever you can find. We used:
– River stones
– craft sticks
– foil
– plastic gems
– Painted pinecones left over from Christmas craft last year (but you could also just use pieces of shrubs from the garden, twigs or plastic plants from the kid’s toy box)
– small toys to live in the world

How to:
small-world-10

To begin with fill the tray with sand. We left a hole in the middle for our lake. The lake is made of foil moulded into a lake shape, filled with blue acrylic gems. Miss K helped me line the outside of the lake with the river stones, then we placed a bridge made from craft sticks over it and created a path from some of the remaining river stones. For the finishing touch we added some pine cone “trees”.

small-world-5
All that was left to do was to go and find some toys to live in the world we’d just made. Miss K went and selected three of her favourites which happened to be a baby duck, a tiny dinosaur and an enormous turtle, haha.

small-world-4
I think the toys liked the lovely new world we made for them, and Miss K really enjoyed playing with it.

small-world-11

small-world-8

small-world-6
For tons more craft for play ideas visit my Craft and Play board on Pinterest

 

The following two tabs change content below.
Kate is a mother of two and blogger at The Craft Train. She aims to keep her craft ideas simple, achievable, inexpensive and creative – oh, and fun too. Hope you like them!

Subscribe to the Easy Peasy Kids blog

Nathalie only blogs around once a month so make sure you never miss a post - subscribe below!

Enter your email address:

Comments

  1. This looks like such an inviting small world play scene. What fun to create this together. I like that the bits and pieces used are ones that most people have at home, or could easily obtain – very resourceful 🙂
    Elise @ Creative Play Central recently posted…Birthday BookMy Profile

  2. Love this. My girls just LOVE small world play!

Trackbacks

  1. […] love this water/sand small world play box seen on Easy Peasy Kids. It would be perfect for LEGO minifigs, plastic animals or any small toys. You could try and […]

Leave a Reply to Elise @ Creative Play Central Cancel reply

*

CommentLuv badge

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.