Tyre ladybird & bottle top insect friends

Operation: Create an outdoor play wonderland - Phase 6

Versatile ladybird tyre ... and friends!

Inspiration?  Unfortunately, I'm actually not sure of the original source, but my imagination was captured by this picture on the facebook page of My Salvos Stores, with beautiful, bright, colourful, playful recycling ideas for tyres:

Most looked a bit too tricky for me! ... but this little ladybird was the cutie that caught my eye!!
And here's our version...

It's a container, a frame, a house, a character, a seat, a novelty 'thing'  - to climb, crawl and walk over, sitting boldly in the middle of the outdoor area, snatching all of the attention! (It's also really portable and easy to store out of the way)

Hey there little one!

So, after the excitement of admiring the newest addition to our outdoor space, I decided we could make use of a few bottle tops from our recycling box collection and make some mini ladybirds and bees. While B. played with the tyre, I started colouring the bottle tops on our outdoor table.

Can you guess which bee my cheeky monkey decorated when I turned my back for a second? Too darn cute!

Some parsley, rocks, and little stones make it more 'homely' for the little insect babies :-)

Rolling a tyre along is not as easy as it looks - but it is super fun!

Some more little surprise insect friends in amongst the pots... ironically, this plant is actually supposed to be an insect repelling plant (mosquitoes!) hehehe! Ahh, it's the little things :-)

... And for the curious insect spotters out there, here's a little chart to identify different ladybirds, found on Amorphophallus' blog

If you enjoyed this post, you may be interested in the other Kids' Play Space posts documenting the transformation of our mini concrete jungle into a more natural play wonderland for our 2 year old to enjoy:

Phase 1- The Shell Sandpit

Phase 2 - Tree Stumps
Phase 3 - Gardening Magic 

Phase 4 - Follow the Fenceline Brick Road

Phase 5 - Dinosaur small world in a pot

Phase 7 - Frog Small World

Phase 8 - Outdoor puppet theatre

Thanks for visiting Kids' Play Space!
'til soon,
happy playing!
Anna :-)