Enchantment and Imagination with Sprites and Fairies

Nau mai haere mai, welcome to our fourth term at Kindergarten.

 As part of our set up this term, we have created the beginnings of a fairy woodland inside. Our vision is that over the next few weeks this tiny grove will continue to develop and flourish with the children’s input and imaginative ideas.

The fairy grove was one of the first things that Ben noticed when he arrived at Kindergarten yesterday. Ben was very excited about the beginnings of this space as he had spent lots of his holidays creating ‘traps’ for fairies and sprites in his garden at home. Ben has a wonderful imagination which was further influenced by a special book he had taken out of the library.

Today Ben arrived with this book to Kindergarten; it is from the Spiderwick Chronicles and is titled ‘The Care and Feeding of Sprites’.

“We can all use a little magic in our lives and the imagination can fuel some pretty magical moments. Picture books portray amazing fantasy worlds, providing inspiration for children to think imaginatively on their own.” – Brim-full Curiosities

Ben was really keen to share his favourite pictures with many of his peers. The sprites in the book are influenced by real images in nature; with a strong focus on insects and flora. As we are working to capture the children’s ideas and thinking about fairies or sprites, I suggested that maybe we could find resources to create sprites of our own.

Using Ben’s book as a guide and inspiration, a small group of children got very busy at the hot glue gun table. As the morning progressed many beautiful woodland sprites and fairies began to emerge in the play…

“When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.” ― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

 “Mine lives at my home. This is my family sprite. Sometimes it goes in the leaves. It can’t fly in the rain cause the rain makes it bend and fall. My sprites name is Makaluee and he can talk in my language” – Ben

“My fairy can fly and it can fall on it’s tummy but it doesn’t even hurt because it has a hard tummy. My fairy can dive, it dives to the bottom of the sea to see sharks! This can do magic powers to kill sharks” – Joseph

 “My fairy lives at my house. It flies” – Jaimee

“My fairy flies around all day and has some friends, their names are Bianca and Theatre and Bounce. Her name is Diamond Crystal. Her special thing is to fly around.

Did you know my fairy can hide in the bushes and when somebody makes something like a treehouse this fairy goes there to sleep. It likes it and it flies around happily in it. It has specially powers, to disappear cakes!” – Liliana

 “My Fairy does special things, she does the dishes, she goes to bed at nightime. She lives up in fairyland. Her name is Mia” – Mia

“My fairy lives in a tree and everyday it sleeps in my bed. My fairies name is Julie. She has powers and can turn people into monkeys!” – Emma

“My fairy lives in fairyland, her name is Moon” – Eleanor

“This is a boy fairy. He lives in the house” - James

“On these magic shores children at play are for ever beaching their coracles. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall land no more.”
― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Educationalist and philosopher Steiner described imagination as emerging from perception by means of the senses, causing an active thinking process to create what he terms ‘living pictures’ in the mind of the observer. These ‘living pictures’ are flexible perceptions, able to expand and be refined as and when further experiences present themselves (1996).

Young children have the physical development, language and thinking skills to be very imaginative and creative with everyday objects and their surroundings. They are often ‘lost’ in the world of make-believe. By providing interest, support, props and provocations to support children’s imaginative play, we are encouraging them to use their imaginations in play and develop a problem-solving approach to learning. 

“Educating a child’s imagination is therefore an important way to prepare children for the future” (Isenberg & Jalongo, 2001).

Nga mihi, Kim