Earth Day Terrarium Project

I saw a cool magazine article about terrariums, and making them with kids, and the first thing that caught my eye was the use of an apothecary jar just like the one that I have. I have used it for a couple of years in the nursery to hold medicine. It worked great and was so cute and functional, but now that Ardyn and Marek are "into" things, I have put the medicine up and been using the jar for non-dangerous items, but it had become more of a catchall than anything and I wasn't sure what it's next purpose was going to be. Until I saw the awesome magazine article!

We started off with our soil mixture, some pea gravel, my plants (I chose mostly succulents that are small and like warm climates) and a couple of decorations. The article calls for charcoal chips to be used in the gravel, but I didn't have any, didn't want to search forever for them, and really didn't want this project to cost a ton (I already had enough money in plants!) I washed and dried the jar, rinsed the pea gravel, and had Ardyn help me scoop it all into the jar. She experimented with different scoops, shovels, and spoons to see how much she could scoop each time. Then we added our potting soil and planted our little succulents. Ardyn added a special rock, and I added the mushroom. We put the lid on and Ardyn was THRILLED. Ardyn helped add some water, and voila! Earth Day Terrarium. Click the pics to view larger, and then click on them again to zoom to full size :)