Fairy Libraries

DESCRIPTION
This is an outdoor world-making activity to build small-scale libraries suitable for fairies, and furnish them with books children make and write.

DETAILS
There are 3 parts:
  1. ​Gathering Woods Walk in which children collect nature materials
  2. Sketching to See, and then build a structure by gluing or tying sticks, bark, paper, and other natural/non-toxic materials together into a library structure children design.
  3. Habitat Hunt in the woods to find the ecologically ideal site for the Fairy Library, and place the built structure there.

BIG IDEAS 
  1. Unseen woodland spirits are common to all cultures, and fairies make up one character genre common to English-language readers and writers.
  2. Creative children can join this great tradition of fairy-world conjuring.
  3. They do this through imagining fairy characters and meeting their needs, seeing the woods as fairy habitat, and building out structures to serve their fairy characters and plot purposes.

PURPOSE
​To encourage children to make a world no one has ever seen through imaginative visioning and building of small structures made of found, natural materials that can support fairy lifestyles, needs, and behaviors. For storycrafting skills, this workshop empowers children to own and flex their inborn world-making imaginative capacities that are the foundation of all art.

ACTIVITY
  • Introduce children to the idea of world storytelling cultures as having traditions of wee, invisible spirits of the woods or waters—fairies, tomten, troll, shape-shifters, and more.
  • In the Gathering Woods Walk, hand out bags to each child or partners and walk through park, woods, and yards to pick up “found” and fallen natural materials to use in building a fairy library.
  • In the Sketching to See phase, have each child sketch a picture (blueprint) of their fairy library and then follow it by gluing their sticks, leaves, bark, and other materials into a fairy library structure.
  • After the structure is built, go on a walking Habitat Hunt to find a place in the woods to establish a fairy village, anchored by the fairy library, and place your structure in the woods or park.
  • Write fairy-sized books on small accordion folded paper to make books, writing and drawing stories, and placing them in the fairy library.
  • Encourage friends and family to respectfully explore the fairy libraries, read the books—and perhaps contribute books or notes.

WRAP-UP RECAP
Children are invited to use their story-making imaginations to contribute to a world culture of small, fanciful creatures no one has ever seen—but that world literature offers many lively stories about. Children invent new characters and plots for these creatures, build dwellings for them, and imagine a lifestyle that involves fairy libraries, or other structures children build.
​AGES: Preschool-grade 4
TIME: 1 hour; highly flexible

​MATERIALS NEEDED
  • A woods, yard, or park to collect materials, and to place the finished structures
  • Background talk to present enduring ideas of  fairy, gnome, elf culture
  • Recycled paper grocery bags to use when collecting materials on A Gathering Walk
  • Found natural materials, including sticks, bark, moss, rocks, leaves, flower, pine cones
  • Water-based glue or low-temperature glue guns if there are older interns available to help children use them; Wax twists or twine, can also tie sticks together
  • Pen, pencils, markers, and paper to sketch their designs of what fairies need and what they will build, and to write and illustrate small books for the fairy library