My kids love any kind of cooking show. A particular favourite is The Great British Bake Off (or baking show as they call it in the US). In true bake-off style, they decided to make a mud cake. “The theme is cakes”, they told me “but it can’t be just a cupcake it has to be a proper cake”.
Today is International Mud Day, when children around the world celebrate the most diverse, low-cost and accessible plaything on earth. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate.
They build a plan and get to work, problem solving all the way.
They gather things from around the garden to create their designs.
The children explain the rules for the judging.
Something always goes wrong on Bake Off. The trial run didn’t quite go as planned so the girls think again.
The trial run of the frog mould cake works perfectly, but when the final one is made it drops too early and spoils the mint and grass lily pad. After a few failed attempts a final frog is made by moulding it with hands instead.
And Master Baker this week is…..
The mint and rose surprise – sadly the frog was a great idea but there were a few problems with the batter.
Don’t you love that play can be inspired by so many things? Happy International Mud Day.
I’ve never been able to avoid playing in dirt with my kids, nor have I ever wanted to. From the youngest age the girls would pick up small stones from the ground or carry sticks. I would walk the dogs at the local park and my daughter would gravitate towards a dirt patch and spend the whole time absorbed with the dusty dry mud. At other times, she would stop at every mole hill in the meadow, exploring it with her fingers.
As for muddy puddles – regardless of footwear they are just too tempting to resist.
I was very lucky to find a preschool for my youngest that embraces mud play.
The swamp
The mud patch – building rivers and streams
If you can’t enjoy getting dirty when you are a child then when can you?
I want it to have hair like mine.digging for worms
Mud play isn’t just fun, it is also great for children’s health and development. Check out my article in Parentmap to find out more.
With limited toys and great weather,we have been playing with natural materials and everyday objects. The children and I created a mud kitchen in the garden.
What is a Mud Kitchen?
A mud kitchen is an outdoor play kitchen for children to explore the properties of mud. In a similar way to my own mud pie and mud drink making as a child, ( I remember filling up small dirt holes with water and tasting the mixture with a stick) the children mixed the mud in a kitchen made of recycled materials. You could use a ready-made play kitchen but it isn’t necessary.
How to Build a Mud Kitchen
We made ours using various items we found around the house. We made a shelf using bricks and a piece of wood, an oven from a cardboard box and collected containers from our recycling.  An old cupboard, table or sink would work equally well and I’m sure that when our stuff arrives from the UK we will find things to add.
Collect old kitchen utensils, pans and bowls from charity shops, friends or car boot sales. We put a sign on our fence next to the mud kitchen requesting items – no-one has donated yet but the children check for new additions every day. It is a good idea to place the mud kitchen near a fence or tree where the utensils can be hung – this way the kitchen will be nicely self-contained and easy to tidy.
The Benefits of Playing in the Mud
Children learn in a variety of ways; many children (particularly boys) prefer to play outdoors. In most pre-schools I have visited in the UK indoor classrooms exist alongside outdoor classrooms. Children who may not choose imaginative play indoors may be attracted to the mud kitchen. The mud kitchen is rich in learning experiences including learning the rules of good hygiene, exploring the properties of mud, manipulating mud and tools with their fingers, measuring, imaginative play building on the children’s own experiences, finding out about bugs, problem solving and co-operation and sharing. Involve the children in the creation of the mud kitchen, they will come up with many ideas that adults may not have considered.
Health Benefits
To add weight to my argument I read an excellent post this week about the health benefits of playing in mud. The Children of the 90’s project at the University of Bristol recently reported a number of benefits for children who spend time outdoors. One study suggests that children who spend more time outdoors are less likely to develop short- sightedness and they also found that good levels of Vitamin D was linked to better health including mental health. Another study from Bristol University in 2007 suggests that friendly bacteria contained in soil, activates neurons responsible for producing the brain chemical serotonin. A lack of serotonin is thought to cause depression; playing with mud is therefore likely to improve children’s mental health.
Our Mud Kitchen
We built our mud kitchen during August. In the UK this is often the wettest month of the year but here in Washington State we have had a perfectly dry month. This was probably not the best time to build a mud kitchen but as the seasons change the play will develop.
We built the kitchen in a patch of garden where there was plenty of soil but soon discovered that the top layer consisted of wood chippings from the surrounding Pine trees. This was great for sprinkling and pouring but moulding cakes and pies had limited success. I suggested we dig a hole to reach the true soil under the surface, we used the hose to wet it. Filling the hole with water attracted a flying insect that we hadn’t encountered before, the girls were apprehensive but interested in watching the creature.
We are making coffee powder
My 8-year-old who loves the idea of creating experiments or being an inventor, mixed the mud to make coffee.
I suggested she put it into the empty coffee container but she explained that it started wet and took at least a day to drain off before it could be transferred to the coffee container.
‘It takes at least a day to drain off’
My 3-year-old preferred to make a cake. She sprinkled grass on the top.
I’m looking forward to the change in the weather and seeing how the play develops as the mud changes.
We had a lovely time today at Glenny Woods organised by our local Children’s Centre. Glenny Woods is a wonderful woodland centre owned by the Scouts Movement. They have an indoor room with a veranda for when it is wet, an area for lighting fires with bench seating, adventure playground equipment and facilities for making dens.
However, even if your nearest wood doesn’t have these added facilities there are lots of simple fun things that you can do with children.  Try not to rush children on to looking at the next thing. They may want to spend half an hour looking at a clump of moss or sliding down a muddy bank. If you really want your children to appreciate and explore nature then allow lots of time and move at their pace (however frustrating this might be).
1. Give children a piece of cardboard with double sided sticky tape on and get them to make a hat collecting natural things. This could be free choice or maybe have a colour theme. You could ask children to create a pattern eg. large and small things or find specific items to make their hat.
2. Put double sided sticky tape around the top of your child’s wellies and ask them to collect items of interest and stick them to their wellies.
3. Take magnifiers or bug jars and look for creatures. Take photographs so that you can identify them when you get home.
Look Mummy I found a snail
4. Young children will enjoy exploring the textures of things, moss, long grass, tree trunks, mud. Give children a textural treasure hunt – find things that are soft, smooth, hard, spiky, slimy, cold, warm, rough etc. Make a feely box containing some of the textured things or use a blindfold and ask children to describe what they are touching.
5. Give children a piece of string and ask them to find and attach the following items: something natural, something manmade, something colourful, something heavy and something with an interesting shape. Hang a line of string between 2 trees and hang the completed pieces from it to make a natural work of art.
6. Build a fire, toast marshmallows on whittled sticks or bake potatoes in the bottom of the fire.
7. Go on a treasure hunt
8. Play in the mud. Take tools and to see what you might find or stamp and feel the texture of wet gooey mud. Find a stick and draw or write in the wet mud, or take large sheets of paper and use mud to paint with – use fingers or sticks to apply the mud.
9. Collect natural materials to make a picture or sculpture . Make a frame from sticks or stones and ask the children to make a picture inside it using what they have collected. For the youngest children let them arrange leaves into a nest or sticks or stones into a pattern.
10. Build a den. Use sticks and build a den in the style of Eeyore’s house.
You might also want to check out some of these ideas
Right from the Start 