Autumn Tidy

This small world activity for toddlers is based on the children’s book Tidy written by Emily Gravett. In the story Badger likes to have everything neat and tidy. He keeps tidying and cleaning until he has completely destroyed the forest. It has such an important message. My two both loved this story so much that we had to read it three times in a row. F kept saying “oh no, oh no” when Badger removed all of the trees. This children’s small world activity is easy to put together at home and is perfect for Autumn.

Set Up

We had recently collected lots of various natural bits whilst outdoors including leaves, conkers, acorns and flower petals. I left these in the basket and then used a metal tray, like this one, to represent the forest which Badger has poured concrete over it. That is all that is needed for this small world play idea.

So the purpose was for the girls to help transform the concrete forest that Badger had created back into a beautiful, autumnal, forest small world ready to play with. F in particular was keen to get started and happily started putting all the bits from the basket onto the tray. M wanted to start creating stories with all the characters and bits straight away as opposed to building the scene first. I was more than happy for her to play how she wanted.

This Autumn themed small world activity was a big hit with my two. This children’s book is one of our favourites and one we will be reading it again and again. I have left their Autumn small world tray out and it is great to watch them go back to play with it again and again. Such a simple, small world idea for toddlers and older children that is easy to set up at home.