Make a Kid-friendly Backyard: Creative and Magical Backyard Ideas for Kids

Make a Kid-friendly Backyard: Creative and Magical Backyard Ideas for Kids is a post from guest writer Sara.

If you’re looking for a touch of whimsy to add to your life, a pinch of fairy dust should do the trick. If you don’t have any fairy dust, a sprinkle of glitter mixed with sugar is a quite handy substitute.

Of course, if you want to invite even more magic into your world, here are a few more creative and magical backyard ideas for kids.

Related Reading: 

• Summer Scavenger Hunt Ideas – 14 Free Printable Scavenger Hunt Lists
• 5 Tools to Get Started in Backyard Nature Studies
• Bird Watching: How to Cultivate Bird Watching as a Family Hobby

Make a Kid-friendly Backyard: Creative and Magical Backyard Ideas for Kids

Plant a Butterfly Bush.

Keeping butterflies in your yard will guarantee that fairies will visit! You should definitely consider putting in a butterfly bush!

As a family, you can research which flowers attract butterflies and bees together, then design and plant a garden as small or as large as you like.

You can also guess which flowers will grow faster and measure them each week as an ongoing experiment.

Related Reading: Free Plant and Gardening Worksheets for Kindergarten – 2nd Grade (This packet includes a plant observation journaling page)

Make a Fairy Garden.

It can be as simple as a bit of moss tucked beneath a cozy tree or as elaborate as your own fairy house, furniture, and toadstool. You can even make multiple fairy gardens around your home to visit.

Your children may want to leave tiny sweet gifts, like a cookie crumb, to help attract fairies to their new nests. And if the fairies have already arrived, how about writing a story about them?

More Backyard Ideas for Kids: How (and Why) to Build a Teepee-Style Fairy House

Create Clay Critters.

When I blog, I use Wood Sprite as my daughter’s nickname, and for good reason: she’s as magical as a fairy as she squats beneath our old Oak tree, searching for fairy rings and digging new ponds or constructing homes for magical creatures from her imagination.

She loves making little clay gnomes! It’s very simple to make your own clay gnomes. To make the gnomes, just pinch off tiny pieces of clay, shaping them into a triangle (hat), circles, and squares (head, shirt, pants legs). Piece them together carefully. This is an excellent time to teach about scoring and slipping! Then you can play with your little gnomes, or even invite them to take a stroll in your garden. Here are excellent instructions for making more elaborate gnomes.

Make a Toad Home.

Your fairies and gnomes would be rather lonely without their toad friends!

You can make a simple toad home to tuck into the earth out of just about anything –  from a coffee can to a broken flower pot to a pre-made toad house.

Related Reading for Backyard Ideas for Kids: How to Make a Self-Watering Planter for Under $10

Grow Your Own Fairy Ring.

We once had a natural fairy ring spring up around one of our trees. It was a truly magical sight!

If you worry about poisonous mushrooms peeking through your grass–or you simply don’t have mushrooms grow where you live very often–you could always just buy some and have them in a fairy-licious meal at home, or even order a kit and safely grow your own.

Install a Fairy Door.

You can draw or make a fairy door outside and decorate it however you want (or use these instructions to make an even more elaborate, 3-D door) before “installing” it at the bottom of a wall, tree, or another area.

If you don’t want a DIY fairy door project, you could also purchase a premade fairy door.

And here are tons of amazing fairy doors on Etsy for all budgets:

1. Fairy Door Bella in Blue by MyFairyTaleDoors
2. Tiny Tooth Fairy Doors
3. Colorful Fairy Doors by NerdiganCreations
4. Fairy Door Iris in Red by MyFairyTaleDoors
5. Miniature Doors by RubarbStudios
6. Mara-style Fairy Door in Yellow by MyFairyTaleDoors
7. Fairy Door/Gnome Door by ScaryGaryCreations
8. —
9. Outdoor Handpainted Garden Fairy and Elf Door by LittleLivsHandmade
10. Ladybug Fairy Door by OnlyInMiniature
11. Gnome Door by NothinButWood

Other Fairy and Magical Posts You May Love:

Sara Schmidt is a homeschooling mom, writer, artist, activist, and intermittent graduate student from Missouri. She likes to go on adventures with her family, enjoy fantasy lit and films, and generally get messy. 

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. They don’t change the price you pay. However, when you shop through them, we may receive a small compensation.

Make a Kid-friendly Backyard: Creative and Magical Backyard Ideas for Kids was originally published on April 6, 2012. It was updated and content was added in May 2020 by Angie Kauffman.