Farm Small World

We LOVE a small world at our house and I set them up regularly for Tommy and I to play with together or for Tommy to play with independently. They can sometimes take a long time to plan and set up and it can be a bit soul-destroying if your child plays with them for 5 minutes and then becomes disinterested. It makes you not want to bother again. Luckily for us, small worlds are always a hit with our four-year old. It's usually me that ends up begging to put it away after it's been set up for a week and begins to get in the way. A small world is something I can guarantee Tommy will play with for at least an hour at a time. And there are very few of his toys I could say that about. It is something he is very happy to play with, either with an adult or on his own.

We are huge fans of Schleich models in our house and I remember owning many as a child. They're so useful for imaginative play because they are a decent size, realistic and extremely hard-wearing. We already own a good collection of dinosaurs, wild animals and farm animals.

When it comes to small worlds, I try and plan something that makes use of items we already have, rather than buying new things. Because we had a large collection of farm animals and vehicles, it would be easy to create a farm small world.

For the landscape, I pretty much emptied the kitchen cupboards to see what I could find that might look like animal bedding. I eventually settled on porridge oats, red lentils, cornflakes, rice and spaghetti. I also used several shredded wheat for hay bales.

I then added green tissue paper to make fields, Lego fences, buildings and flowers. Several Lego animals also made an appearance too. I cut out a piece of foam and covered it in cling film to make it look like water and placed this in the centre of the tray to look like a pond.finally, I added the farm animals and several vehicle and it was ready! 

This was such a hit with Tommy. He spent a long time feeding the animals and using the vehicles to carry out jobs around the farm. He used the tractors to move the materials around and invented scenarios involving the different animals. He had so much fun with it. 

 

As with so many of our small worlds, we left this out for a few days, so it could be played with again and again. The only downside was that this small world was made out of edible materials; we went out only to come back and find the dog had eaten all of the cornflakes! :(