The Enchanted Forest
installationsAll ages
Cardboard trees and giant spotty mushrooms to walk through and paint all week.
A cardboard forest to paint all week, plus squishy mushrooms, fairy gardens, mini potions, a woodland sensory tub and flower lanterns.
Introduction
This theme started with the mini potion bottles, which I first found at an op shop as a little perfume bottle, and they're what set my mind off! All six experiences come from the times we've run this theme at Smudge, from a cardboard forest the kids paint over a week to soft sculpture mushrooms, fairy gardens on wooden boards, a mini potion station, woodland sensory play and glass jar lanterns.
The forest is the biggest set-up, and once the mushrooms, fairy gardens and lanterns are finished they can all move into it, so it fills up as the week goes on.
From Smudge to You
Below you'll find the collection of creative activities we've used to bring this theme to life at Smudge. Each one is an invitation to play, experiment, and see where the materials take you. Pick and choose what excites you and adapt them to your own space.
A taste of what's inside
installationsAll ages
Cardboard trees and giant spotty mushrooms to walk through and paint all week.
5 more inside this theme
Experience 2
sculpture
Painted canvas mushrooms, stuffed with fabric scraps and wool until they're soft enough to squeeze.
Experience 3
sculpture
A small garden built on a thick wooden board, with river stones, peg people and egg carton mushrooms.
Experience 4
creative-exploration
Fizzing potions mixed in small jars, and a tiny cork-topped bottle for every child to take home.
Experience 5
Gather these before you start.
Every theme at Smudge starts with an installation, and for Enchanted Forest our installation corner becomes a forest of cardboard trees and mushrooms for the kids to walk through and paint. We cut the trees from the large, thin square sheets of cardboard that go between the layers on a pallet of paint tins, each with a trunk and a wide canopy, then glue a few extra leaf shapes over the top so the canopy has layers to paint into. The mushrooms sit lower, anywhere from knee height to as tall as the kids, with circles glued onto the caps for spots, and a large Fiskars circle punch works beautifully on this cardboard.
To stand everything up, we attach the trees and mushrooms to cardboard tubes or metal stands, and small umbrella bases are great for this too.
Around the trees we hang two baskets of trailing flowers from the ceiling, a string of festoon lights along the wall and paper butterflies on the trees and the bricks. A canvas drop sheet goes down over the floor before any paint comes out, because the kids paint standing up and from all sides of the trees (and it does end up everywhere!).
Leave the cardboard brown and set small pots of paint across the floor with a brush in each, so the kids can move from tree to tree. We used blues, greens and teals with some pink, purple and yellow, and a little white mixed into each colour helps it cover the brown cardboard in one coat.
The layers build up over the days, so leave the forest standing for a week if you can. We put ours up plain on a Monday, and by Wednesday there was hardly any brown cardboard left!
For a smaller space, one tree and two or three mushrooms against a wall is plenty. Big brushes and sponges cover the canopies faster, and the squishy mushrooms, fairy gardens and lanterns from the other experiences can all move into the forest once they're finished.
sensory-play
A tub of dried split peas with little gnomes, river stones and felt balls to scoop and dig through.
Experience 6
collage
Small glass jars covered in pressed flowers, with a twisted wire handle and a battery tea light inside.