Carrot Garden

Soil, plastic carrots and tools made for a great gardening role play activity with my son. I lost count of the number of carrot smoothies I was served up!

Carrot gardening small world.

What you need:

- plastic storage tub

- plastic carrots (ours came from Walmart as part of a mini carrot bowling set)

- junior gardening gloves

- plastic trowel and cultivator

Materials needed.

How it works:

I walked past these lovely little plastic carrots in the clearance aisle just after Easter weekend and I couldn't pass them up at 75% off. This tub literally took five minutes to set up and gave my son nearly two hours of entertainment this afternoon.

I tipped the soil into the storage tub and then 'planted' a few rows of the plastic carrots. I put the rest of the carrots in the large carrot cup and placed my son's gardening gloves and tools in the tub as well.

My son started off by just scooping and tipping the soil with the trowel. He enjoyed exploring the feel of the soil with his hands. He also liked planting and then digging up the carrots for Mummy to eat ('only pretend Mummy, don't really eat them because they are so dirty!!!').

Scooping and tipping the soil.

Digging up the carrots.

After a while he had 'an idea'. He decided to use the carrots to open a carrot smoothie shop. He would dig up carrots, count them into the large carrot cup, fill it to the brim with soil and then charge me a small fortune for the pleasure of 'drinking' it. I should mention, however, these were super strong carrot smoothies so I'm hoping to wake up tomorrow with a new lease of life as I was promised!

Adding the carrots and soil to the smoothie. 

Making it nice and compact.

Ready to drink Mummy........ yummy!

Of course this would not be a completed sensory bin if there wasn't some form of vehicle involved so my son also decided to throw in a tractor which helped to dig up the carrots which were 'reeeeaaalllyyyy stuck' in the soil.

Tractor to the rescue.

Such an fast small world to create and a nice and easy one to store for a few days before being able to use all the contents in a different way at a later date.