Go ahead and read this aloud: “Come out of your faery bower,
Come upon this golden hour.
Come to me I beg you please,
Faeries dancing upon the breeze.”
See any fairies yet? No? Well, if this chant didn’t work perhaps you just haven’t offered them a house that is up to their expectations. If that’s the case, you could try getting some pointers from the youngsters at Educare for Kids who spent time creating and accessorizing fairy houses as a project at the child care center.
Ten were completed by Tuesday when they were put on public display from 2:30 to 4 p.m. under a canopy outside the front door at 217 East Main St. in Orange, while another was being crafted inside. A few people reportedly stopped and made offers on the fairy houses, but they are not for sale because the kids are taking them home.
Director Susan Heinricher, who founded the child care center in 1981, said she marveled at the engineering and design skills the children exhibited during the whimsical project.
“It was just an idea,” she said with the fairy houses on display a week and a half after International Fairy Day (June 24). “Somebody said they wanted to make a fairy house and I said we could do that.”
Heinricher said her friend David Young, a former logger who also happens to be town coordinator in Warwick, brought in logs, which the children nailed to plywood bases they made.
“And I let their imaginations go wild,” Heinricher said. “They’re all different.”
The children accessorized their fairy houses with moss, rocks and other items they found while searching the woods near the landfill. Eight kids participated, some partnering with friends to create their masterpieces and customize them. Fairy house features include ladders, window frames, stairs, a swimming pool filled with water, and playground equipment complete with swing set, seesaw and roundabout.
“Everything is functional,” said Colby Davis, 10, of Orange. “My favorite part was decorating it.”
Arianna Sale, 8, of Greenfield, teamed up with Scarlet Euvrard to make one.
“We put little stairs and we hot-glue-gunned it down and then we put moss on the top of them so they could be mossy stairs leading all the way over to the little porch,” Arianna said near her fairy house. “We both liked to do the mossy stairs and to put the swing on.”
Bella Cooke, a 20-year-old teacher’s assistant, built a house with Zak Boudreau.
“I even put on handicap-accessible doors,” she said to the amazement of Colby. “That way if the fairies have injured hands, if they can’t grab things, they can put their hand in and pull it back.”
Cooke said she had special inspiration, as her father, Jeffrey Cooke, is Orange’s building commissioner.
“So it’s up to standard, up to code,” she said. “Well, maybe not the stairs.”
Cooke said she has 200 plants at home and the fairy house will fit right in.
Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 262.