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Simple because I have a tub of coloured rice in the cupboard along with lots of different loose parts (manipulatives) that we use for play at home but I use at school for maths mostly but sometimes in literacy centres or during activity time.
If you're thinking of making your own - the coloured flowers and hearts came from the craft section of a discount store (Cheap as Chips I think) as did the clear plastic butterflies while I'd bought the glass diamonds at a homeware store. They're for scattering on your table but we love them because they catch the light and sparkle. The blue/green/white glass beads I'd bought from the garden section at Bunnings. We use them for lots of our play. The fake flowers were left over from when we made flower faires one afternoon. You can visit this link to make your own - they were so easy to may and very pretty. The Grimms rainbow she had received at Christmas from Santa. Apparently it's very similar to this one (affiliate link). Santa had also brought my other daughter some fairy garden furniture. We'd made some small fairy gardens in baskets last summer. You can see them here. They were great fun to make but they lacked a certain something...
Factory Direct Craft in the US has the most amazing range of everything really but has one of the best fairy garden selections too. Visit them here. I use a freight forwarder but they do ship to Australia or otherwise trust in Santa to deliver ;) Needless to say, my middle child is very happy.
Then the Lalaloopsy's got to play.
And then (of course) everyone wanted to play... peace at last.
A few days later, it's changed again. I love watching how their play changes over time when we leave something out for a little while.
The Lalaloopsy's were back, they'd brought friends and their own house this time. The rainbow made it into the garden along with some wooden biscuits and the timelessly beautiful paper umbrellas.
What are you doing to escape the heat or cold where you are?