Making A Garden Roadway {Crafting With Little Kids}

As the parent of a four year old boy, my house has become overrun with tiny cars, anything Disney Cars related, and lots of trucks.  I find that my friends who are girl-mamas also have the assortment of wheeled vehicles.  We often turn our train table into a roadway, but being it’s summer, we are outside often and those little cars get lost in the sandbox.  Inspired by a project I saw on the Lowes’ website for building a backyard road, I thought I would give it a try.  My son was really excited about this project so I decided to and enlist his help in the whole thing.  It doesn’t look like what I originally intended, but it came out perfect for him. You can check out Lowe’s instructions for this project and read on to see how it worked out in real life for us!

Supplies:
Bricks, we used about 28 small ones and two large ones for “parking lots”
white and/or yellow paint
paint brush
rubber mulch (the recycled tire kind that is soft and squishy)
landscape adhesive and a caulk gun (optional)
toy cars and trucks

Depending on your space, this project can be as simple or as elaborate as you want. We have a play area in our yard that we have covered with rubber mulch. I used a small part of that for our road. I also decided that we would be attempting to create this project on as small of a budget as possible. I was able to use some bricks I found in our yard, along with purchasing the least expensive bricks I could find (at $.50 each) for the road. I also used acrylic paint that I already had. My son had fun helping me pick out and buy bricks. I let him decide on the layout of the road initially, then tweaked it a bit so that the road connected.

After laying out the road in the desired pattern, adjust the bricks so that they are lined up tight to each other and laying on a flat surface.  I raked the area we used first to level it a bit, since there was already mulch on the ground.  Initially I thought I would use the landscape adhesive to attach all of the bricks, but then it kept raining and the bricks were too wet to use the adhesive.  I still haven’t gone back to attach them and it hasn’t been a problem.  It may also be easier to break down the road in the future when my son is no longer interested in it. 

My son really wanted to help paint the lines on the road, as you can see in the photos.  The Martha Stewart in me was freaking out, but I kept that in my head and let him have fun with it, which he really did.  He wanted parking lots too, so he painted spaces on one big brick while I did the other.  He also wanted road signs, which is why one brick is painted red for a stop sign. 

After the paint was dry, I added two bags of rubber mulch to the area, inside and around the road.  I figured it would be a softer place to kneel or sit while playing there, as well as cover the sides of the bricks. 

This turned out to be a fun project that my son is proud of and enjoys using.  Let me know if you try it!

You can find more crafts and adventures with a preschooler on Diane’s blog, Knitting Zeal.

Making Garden Chimes {Crafting With Little Kids}

I was looking for a fun and easy craft project to make with my son that could be completed outside and with very little materials.  I had made this garden chimes project years ago with a bunch of pre-teens, but it’s simple enough to do with preschool aged children.  In the end we had a fun decoration for the yard and were able to enjoy spending time outside.

Materials:

• Three small terracotta plant pots, all the same size or in decreasing sizes. (We used pots that were 1.5 inches high and 2.5 inches high.)
• 36 inches of jute twine
• small bell (optional) 
• 2 or 3 plastic pony beads
• washable or acrylic paints
• paint brushes

Directions:
Cover your table with paper to protect the surface.  Give three plant pots to your child to paint.  (Note: washable paint does not turn out very bright, but is kid safe.  If you think your kids can handle regular acrylic paint, the results will be much more vibrant.  We stuck with washable paints!)

Once the pots are dry, cut a length of jute twine about 36 inches long.  A small bell can be tied to the end if desired, or just knot the end a few times around a plastic pony bead.  Then, holding the smallest pot upside down, thread the twine through the hole in the pot, then thread on another bead.  Hold up the next pot to the twine to see approximately where it would overlap the first pot slightly so that it will rattle against it and place a knot around the bead. Then thread the next pot onto the twine and repeat with the bead and knot for the final pot.  Knot the twine as close as possible to the top pot so that it stays put.  Tie a loop for hanging on the other end of the twine.

Experiment and add more pots to the chimes for a more dramatic effect or use increasingly larger pots to make a really big garden chime.  If there are several kids in a family, each one can paint one pot and then string them together to have a family-created chimes or to give as a gift.

Terracotta pots are fairly fragile, so it is recommended that kids are supervised when handling them.  Once the chimes are finished, hang them in a tree or on a porch out of reach if you are concerned that little ones might play roughly with them.  My son loved playing with my example ones, and despite being fairly rough, they did not break.  They will break easily if dropped, though.

You can find more crafts and adventures with a preschooler on Diane’s blog, Knitting Zeal.