Smiling like Sunshine: Creating A Family Garden {Guest Post}

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I am delighted to have Cerys of Rainy Day Mum here today while I am taking a little summer break. I always enjoy ?reading Cerys' blog as she has lots of playful ideas and activities for toddlers and preschoolers.

Hi Smiling like Sunshine readers, I?m really honoured to be guest posting over here today from Rainy DayMum.

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With summer rapidly ending and autumn creeping closer and closer, getting out and about is even more important. Although we have many parks near us the nearest ones are not safe for my children to play in with glass scattered around the play equipment and much of it in need of repair so we?ve taken some of the aspect of the park to our own small back-garden to make it an inviting place for our children and their friends to play. Using ebay, freecyle and gum tree we have brought play equipment for the garden cheaply saving money and giving new life to pieces that have been well loved before.

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?One of our favourites is the slide ? instead of going for a toddler slide we brought a junior slide which will last longer ? T is currently 17 months and under supervision has been using the slide since she was just over a year old ? the key is that with supervision children can easily play on equipment that is aimed at slightly older children safely.

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We have a sand pit which in the past has doubled as a ball pit, a paddling pool and during the winter an ideal permanent muddy puddle for some fun puddle splashing and jumping.

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Although we have brought a sand and water table with some crates and a large plastic box you can create your own ? ours is used throughout the year ranging with warm water in it during the winter even in the snow. Some days we have sand (from the sand pit), others we may have water or even set up small world play inside it.

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A playhouse is a great addition and it doubles as a store for some of the bigger things during the colder/wetter months, we didn?t go for anything fancy but with the door and windows we can play house, but it?s also been used as our rocket shop, a shop and is frequently used in hide and seek.

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?To store small bits we have a plastic storage box (although that is starting to get a little too full now and we will be rethinking our garden storage for the kids toys over the winter) but it also doubles as we seat for bubble blowing. We use a lot of our natural space as well, we have stones around the lawn area, lots of trees for creating shade as well as bushes which are amazing for creating dens and caves for our bears to hide in so we can re-enact ?we?re going on a bear hunt?. These are our essentials for creating a play garden for kids ? what would you add to it or have you already added to your own?

Cerys is from the United Kingdom and writes at Rainy Day Mum, she is a former teacher and marine biologist, now a stay at home mom to J and T.

Sharing indoor and outdoor activities for babies, toddlers and preschoolers ranging from art to zoo field trips she aims to make every day fun what ever the weather outside.

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Creating A Family Garden {Guest Post}

Source: http://www.smilinglikesunshine.com/2012/08/creating-family-garden-guest-post.html

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