Spring is just on the horizon and all of the fairies are coming out to play again! What better way to welcome more whimsical imaginative play than to construct a fairy house? We invited our friend and collaborator Leah Gaeddert to create a tutorial for the Fairy House Building Kit with her children. They spent a few afternoons curled up on the floor of their room, imaginations running wild and their mat covered in hot glue, sticks, and moss. Every morning her boys would wake up and ask, is it time to work on our fairy house yet?
Though her boys are only 5 and 3 years old, they had so much fun helping her construct this fairy house, and giving input so that in the end the project felt like it was truly theirs!
Materials Needed:
- Fairy House Building Kit
- Garden clippers
- Scissors
- Screwdriver or drill
- Fake or dried flowers (optional)
- Sticks and other foraged objects (optional)
- Mini mushrooms or other treasures (optional)
Assemble the main structure
Using a screwdriver (or drill) and the screws that are provided, begin by assembling your main structure. Leah's boys chose to make it three stories. They used the largest wooden board as the base.
With supervision, young children can assist with assembly! Leah's five year old helped with this step and loved using the screw driver. She helped set up each step to make sure that it would be assembled correctly, he started each screw, and then she made sure that each one was secure.
Begin adding structural details
This is where the fun really starts and, if you are building with kids, where they can start helping make lots of decisions! With each step try asking them guiding questions such as "How do the fairies get from one level to the next?" (a ladder, of course!) and then help them imagine what to make next.
Making the ladder: Using your garden clippers cut two of the longer sticks so that they are long enough to reach from one level to the next. Cut smaller sticks (approximately two inches long) and used our hot glue gun to attach them across the two larger sticks. Add small glue dots on each side of the larger sticks and hold them to dry. Attach the ladder to the fairy house using hot glue.
Making the swing: For their swing, Leah used one of the provided wooden rounds and wire twine. A longer stick and another wooden round were used to attach the swing to the fairy house. Bend the wire twine in half and glue each side to the underside of the swings seat.
Then, using the hot glue, attach the stick to the underside of one of the structure. Glue a small wooden round to the end of the stick, to keep the swing from flying off. Then hang the swing on it and give it a test run to make sure the fairies enjoy the ride.
Making the fences - Fences are a great way to keep your fairies safe on higher levels of the house! One way to make them is to use garden clippers to cut the sticks into 2-2 ½ inch pieces. Put a dot of hot glue onto the wooden boards where each “fence post” should go and press sticks onto board until dry. You could also tie twine to each stick to finish the fence.
Making a shelter On the top level you might put a small shelter to make a cozy spot for the fairies to sleep. Hot glue four sticks onto the top of the board (making sure that they aren’t too far apart for a bark roof to fit on top). Create a roof by hot gluing sticks, as support beams, onto one of the thin pieces of bark to make it sturdy. Then glue the roof onto the top of the sticks. Later, you can glue more of the bark around the outside to create walls.
Decorate your fairy house!
This is a great time to let your children take the lead. Leah's children added moss, tiny mushrooms, fake flowers, and rocks as decorations.
Let them play!
Leah gave her children fairies, Grapat Stick Gnomes, a mushroom table and chairs, and a few Grimms Birthday Ring Decorations to play with. Grapat Mandala pieces would also be great for play! They loved making the fairies go up and down the stairs and play on their swing.
Leah Gaeddert is a loving mother, maker and illustrator. She aims to foster and capture childhood magic in the everyday moments. She lives in the midwest with her husband and three children, Henry, Emmet and Eleanor. Follow her on Instagram!
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