Natural ingredients with Coloured Water in the Mud Kitchen

Our Mud Kitchen is honestly the best and most used kids play thing in our house, no toy compares. If you're considering making a mud kitchen for your children or a preschool, don't feel as if it will be limited to Mud only and messy play, there are so many ways to play in an "Outdoor Kitchen".
Sometimes Dimples asks to go play in the Mud Kitchen but I don't feel like cleaning up muddy clothes so instead of allowing him to get really messy I give him some containers filled with coloured water (tap water and a drop of food colouring) & we go on a hunt for natural cooking ingredients.

This is just as fun as making mud pies but without the mess. Miss Cherub enjoys tinkering in the coloured water just as much as Dimples enjoys making rose tea and Sweet gum nut soup.
In the past we have done some pretty messy Mud play in this Outdoor Kitchen; A Mud Rally Box full of cars and diggers,   Process Painting with Mud & Making a Mud Brick House. If you missed it I have also done a Post on Eight Benefits of Playing in the Mud, however the coloured water was a nice change.

Before making some colourful concoctions, Dimples and I fill up his orange buckets from the Renovated Mud Kitchen with Natural ingredients. Gumnuts, flowers, seeds, twigs, flower buds, and little bits and pieces found in the yard in preparation for his cooking session. Then he creates some beautiful concoctions, mixing together the colours and 'cooking' them, or boiling the water first then adding natural ingredients to stir through.

This type of play is so fresh and calming, Dimples and Miss Cherub could do this for hours. Actually, come to think of it they play happily together for a long time which doesn't occur to this extent in any other play space.  There is something very tranquil about enjoying the sunlight coming through the trees on to the outdoor mud kitchen while the two kiddies play silently together with beautiful flowers and colourful water. They  look so at peace in the world; nothing else matters. 

Dimples & Miss Cherub explore the outdoor environment, search for natural ingredients, experiment with mixing colours, use great imaginations to create and cook up a serve, they role play as they cook and serve me fabulous looking dishes, they are also getting the social advantages of turn taking, sharing, cooperating and playing together. They are also getting hands on experience as they stir, pour, sift, transfer, mix, lift, empty and measure out the water and ingredients.

 

Learning concepts:

Benefits of being outdoors

Exploring Nature

Mixing Colours

Gross Motor - They're always moving as they lift, pour, mix, transfer, measure, stir etc.

Role Playing real life

Imaginative Play

Social Skills - cooperation, sharing, turn taking, collaborating, working together & helping one another.

Happy Adventures 

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Mad Scientist Play - Colour Explosions

As a Mummy blogger I am a bits and bobs hoarder; Meaning I keep anything that has prospective crafting or activity purpose. Among my craft cupboards (yes there are many) I had a collection of empty bottles in different shapes and sizes from baby wash, hair conditioner, drink bottles, vases and so forth, plus squirts from hand washes and sprays from bench cleaners that I've rinsed out. I knew I would use them for something cool one day. Here it is!

In Australia its warming up, days are getting lighter and warmer for longer and so along with the Spring air comes lots of outdoors play. The usual bike riding, ball throwing, digging and playing around the yard is all good and fun but this afternoon I set up a mini science lab for Dimples to experiment with.

Dimples had 2 types of experiments to perform as a Mad scientist. I set up a plastic tub station of bottles, three bottles with white vinegar in them and a few drops of food colour, I chose our three prime colours so as they exploded out he would see them mix in the clear tray they sat in. Then in the other two (the vase and the tall bottle) I did a ratio of canola oil and coloured water for some lava lamp eruptions. We have done this before so Dimples knew exactly what to do.

Getting inspired by the set up and the brightly coloured bottles waiting he went and put on his dress up doctor kit, which became his Mad scientist suit, one of my caps that he dubbed a Mad Scientist cap and some clear safety glasses from Adventures Dads tool shed. He was set and ready.

Dimples first broke open some alka-sielter tablets (you know those tablets that are for upset stomachs, you probably have some in the medicine cabinet) and dropped them into the oil filled bottles. See above. The tablet sinks to the water then it fizzes away in the water which makes the coloured water bubble up and erupt into the oil in blobs but as we know it doesn't mix, so it makes it look like a lava eruption. Pretty cool. Dimples had a close up watch until it settled then tried a larger piece to make even bigger coloured eruptions.

The second experiment was vinegar explosions using coloured vinegar in bottles and bicarb soda. The blue worked so well that it did actually splash Dimples in the face. Lucky he had his scientist safety glasses on. The trick to making a good explosion is to be prepared with everything you need on hand, plus extra. Make sure you put enough vinegar in the bottle so that it is about 2/3 full with enough room for it to fizz/build up and spout out the top.  Use a bottle with a small hole, narrow neck and use a wide funnel so that you can get a shot of bicarb soda into the container in one hit.

Dimples had go after go, of course the very first time worked the best with a huge explosion erupting so quickly it exploded out the top of the funnel before he had a chance to move it. Then he tried the blue witha  huge grin and a very loud "Woah" as he shook his vinegar covered hands but each one still continued to fizz over for several tries and the colours that splashed out onto the tray started mixing and looking very cool indeed. Dimples noticed the colours that were mixing and swirled his fingers around in them.

Do you have a Small Scientist waiting to perform some experiments like these?  

I'd love to hear how it goes, leave me a comment below

Learning Concepts:
Science; Oil/Water & Vinegar/Bicarb
Colour recognition
Mixing Prime Colours
Role Playing & Pretend Play
Sensory
Hands on

Ideas to Extend with:
Volcanic Explosions
Colour Mixing on Ice crystals
Do it in the dark; Glowing Vinegar Science
Mixing Prime Colours in bags

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Rainbow Ice-Crystal Science

 

This awesome Ice colour mixing Experiment started as our usual sensory bin and developed into something I hadnt planned or imagined, a much more magical episode of play and learning.

I love it when Play manifests into new discoveries and something completely unexpected.

 

It all started outside as I was cleaning out the deep freezer!  Instead of wasting the ice slabs I was chipping them off and giving them to Dimples to play with.

Dimples adores penguins so he was happy to play away in an imaginary small world where a Killer whale was chasing penguins onto ice capsules and lion seals were dancing around in the snow. Once all the ice was in the tub I gave him some coloured water to muck around with seen as though it was a warm day, blue & green that represented the ocean then I let him be.

 

Just quickly a word of advice, if you are doing this with younger children be careful as the ice can stick to their skin, I explained this to Dimples first and had some water in the bottom of the tub in case it happened but he thought it was the funniest thing ever and wanted to stick his fingers to the new pieces of ice.

 

To our surprise the coloured water looked amazing on the ice capsules. Because freezer ice is crystallised over time, the colour really soaked up into it much better then on any other ice that we have played with. The capsules kept their crystallised form, with small icicles and didn't melt too quickly, instead they took on the colours and looked like crystals themselves.

Dimples thought this was the coolest thing ever and used up all the green and blue then asked for more. 
Extending on the magical look of the coloured ice crystals we got a few different colours to experiment with and a dropper to use.
Dimples tried out yellow and then got the red, by then most of the ice crystals had blue on them but remained nice and vibrant in colour.  Instead of running through or dripping out the colour stayed nice and bright.

As he squirted red over a blue ice capsule he excitedly yelled "look Mummy Purple!" and I was amazed just how well the colour mixed through the ice. "Wow what other colours can you make?" I encouraged and he made a bright Orange. With every new colour he mixed he would say "WOW, look!" it was great to see him so engaged in the theory of colour mixing.
He experimented with mixing colours and got some beautiful shades of orange and purple amongst the red, green and blue.  By the end it looked like a rainbow of ice crystals.

After all the colour mixing and mucking around Dimples just continued to play with the Rainbow ice trying to break it up and smash it around.
Then after breaking a large slab in two he showed me that the colour had gone all the way through. Instead of the colours running off or only staying on the surface, as they do with your usual ice/salt play they had actually soaked into the entire slab and mixed in the process.

The large purple Ice crystal reminded me off a crystallised amethyst stone that my Nan gave me as a girl. We thought it was quite a magical and beautiful way to have some sensory play and experiment with colour mixing and ice crystals.

Happy Adventures

Mixing prime colours

Colour Exploration Stage 2: Mixing Prime Colours.

Dimples has known his colours for a while now, his lights and darks and all the colours in between!
I guess the next thing is to learn how colours mix together.

This is a Clean and Easy Lesson in Colour mixing for children of all ages. All you need are your Prime colour in food colouring, shaving foam or hair Mouse and some seal locked sandwich bags.

    RED                              YELLOW                                BLUE  

I stuck a small Coloured sticker on the plastic bags to help the learning process so that after the mixing was complete Dimples could see which bags started with what colours. 


What you will need

We did our Secondary Colours; Red/Yellow,  Yellow/Blue,  Blue/Red & I did an unmarked one so that Dimples could mix his own colour, knowing that he would choose all 3 prime colours.

First squirt your shaving cream in down the centre, leave small gaps on either side so your colours can get right in.  Do not over fill it, you want to be able to seal shut your bag easily without getting shaving cream into the sealing lock grooves. If this happens you could end up with an explosion of food colour and shaving cream all over your child's face, then it will be neither a clean nor an easy lesson in colour mixing.



Dimples makes green as the Red and Blue bag waits.

That's it! Seal it closed and one by one let your child mix the colours together. It was a success, Dimples was so enthusiastic as he mixed and mushed the bag around saying "I can see a bit of ..... Green! It made green mama"



Our mixed colours, showing what Prime colour was added to begin with.

 

Not only did Dimples watch and learn colour theory but he got a work out mixing the shaving cream. This is a great activity to strengthen the muscles needed for writing with all the pushing, scrunching, grabbing, pinching, squeezing and moulding. The shaving cream in the bag feels great as well, like a fluffy pillow.


The experimental mixing bag turned out into a light baby poo brown. I didn't get a photo but mid way through mixing it looks delicious! Not kidding, it looked like a rainbow paddle pop . So from a rainbow paddle pop to baby poo brown Dimples learnt that some colours mix well and some not so well.





The rainbow paddlepop colour with all 3 colours.

That turned baby pop brown!?

It was an interesting experiment and he loved it. We had a great discussion about colour, how there is only 3 prime colours and we went through the house pointing out colours as Dimples thought about what colours would be used to make it.

Happy Adventures

Rainbow Gelatin Exploration

Jello, jelly, gelatin its all the same to me.
Its a cool sensory material that never gets boring.
Have you ever used it in play?

 

 

This was our first attempt of gelatin using the jar of powered gelatin and the colours of the Rainbow.
I can announce that we will definitely be trying it again, in bigger better ways....

 
Just the way it jiggles, shakes and wiggles, the smooth texture and the sense of the cool temperature on the tips of your fingers is enough for any child to want to play with it (and adult).

 

I prepared some colourful sheets of jelly using gelatin, all it needs is to be heated (not boiled) and dissolved in water and then add some food colouring and let it set in the fridge. I just poured a cup of individual colours on cooking paper in a tray the night before, not knowing whether it would work or not. Success! I'll have to get more of this stuff, that was so simple.



Dimples and his best buddy explored the wriggly texture of the jelly with their fingers pretending to mix and cook with it. They used measuring cups to "measure" it and some plastic knives and forks to slice it in to pieces.
























Funnily enough, they held the bigger thicker pieces up to the light shaking and wobbling them, laughing at the funny movements it made. They experimented with tearing it up, squishing it between their fingers, chopping it with the knife and squashing it into a bowl pretending to make each other dinner. Mmmmmm Yum flavourless gelatin for dinner.



The gelatin is very fun used this way, its thicker and more pliable than your usual eating jelly, it is more like rubber and handles more from the playful preschooler than any jello would. It doesnt turned liquidy either, it stays in clumps and lasts much longer.
The boys tried mixing it and blending it together but the only success in that was making smaller pieces and more of a mess. They had a ball splatting it about and mucking around with it.



After the rainbow fiesta of wiggly wobbly fun, they piled it all back on to the tray and helped me clean it up like little angels......
That was until we arrived at the park later in the day and they were giggling and pointing at me, to their amusement I found the tiny rainbow chunks of jello they had put in my hair while i was down under the table and chairs trying to clean up.
Little Angels :)

Rainbows in Salt & Goop

Rainbow Goop Messy Play

Dimples had a couple of friends over for a Messy Rainbow Play Date.

This is the colourful fun that they experimented with.

There were 2 Sensory boxes: One with Goop (Cornflour & Water Mix), Another with Cooking Salt.

There were spray bottles filled with Coloured Water, cups with coloured water and droppers & some plastic spoons. I pre-made some Rainbow ice specially for the salt box to.

Miss K Mastering the Double Spray.

Dimples, Miss K & Mr J got stuck into it using the spray bottles, strengthening their little hand muscles and experimenting with the colours. The goop box was first choice!

Within minutes the goop box was a Master Piece of Vibrant Rainbow Colours.

Rainbow Spray bottles in the goop.

 

Using the spoons and droppers they swished the goop around and made a discovery.

The white goop underneath was still White.

So they experimented making wiggly worm shapes with the spoons and mixing the white through the colours.

The result was some pretty cool looking patterns.

 

Rainbow ICE and Salt Sensory Box

Coloured Paper under the Cooking Salt to add to the Rainbow effect

The Salt box was a great big box of messy fun.

Dimples and his friends loved this one.

They started dripping different colours and spraying the salt.

The effect was really cool, they watched as the coloured water soaked through the salt.

Then they started getting right into it: hands in, feeling and squishing the salt between their fingers.

 Rainbow ice worked well slowly seeping into the salt and making a vibrant Rainbow box

The kids filled up cups with the salt and realised on their still goop covered hands that the salt stuck.

Rainbow Spaghetti & Bug Cooking

Play Invitation:

 Cooked Spaghetti in Rainbow colours with some plastic insects and bugs,

set out with Cooking gear & a play kitchen...

Rainbow coloured spaghetti: Cook your spaghetti, then put it in zip lock bags with a drop of oil (so it doesn't stick) & add your food colouring to dye. Soak for a while - Or ask your little one to squish it around, I did this with Dimples & he enjoyed watching the colours soak through and get vibrantly bright.

With some utensils Dimples prepared a scrumptious looking dish for our dog. Rainbow Spag, shaving cream & bugs. Demon, the dog, actually ate some spaghetti that was thrown in his bowl while Dimples went on stirring the cream through, using tongs to pick up the slippery spaghetti & "cooking" it in the pot & play oven.

Pretend cooking in his play kitchen, Dimples role played Head cook, setting the timer, stirring & mixing, putting his handle to the side, using a towl to get the "hot" food out of the oven, letting it cool before serving it.  My little Master Chef.

You can click HERE to check out my post  "The Benefits of Pretend Play" that was featured on Postiveparentingconnection.net  - This type of pretend play fits well into this post, its fun-messy-imaginative Play...

Glowing Vinegar Experiment

After reading a really interesting & fun post over at growingajeweledrose.com about glow water, we have been experimenting a little with lots of glow fun.  I was easily persuaded to buy a black light in the post by growing a jeweled rose, I found one at the local hardware shop for $13- It is a black light globe that I put in a lamp and it is officially one of the most coolest ways to experiment with play.  If you dont have one GET ONE! You wont regret it...  Something you may not know, tonic water even glows!

Basically, the black light makes anything Neon or white glow in the dark. In the above post you will find how to make glow water, it is just neon texter or highlighter texter ink with water. So you crack open your pen and use the ink cylinder, soak it in your water and voila. that is your glow water.

We did a glow bath and some glow paints with shaving cream in the bath and then I used the highlighter ink and mixed it in vinegar for some Science fun in the dark. I used 3 disposable cups filled with orange, pink and green glow vinegar and had 3 smaller container with bicarb soda and some droppers.

Dimples was in awe as he walked into the dark room and everything was glowing. He could not wait to get in to it. The orange & pink worked great, they were so vibrant!
He started with the dropper watching small amounts of the vinegar fizz and bubble away but he couldn't help him self, the affect wasn't good enough. He poured some in and watched the explosion of bubbles come pouring over the top and onto the tray, now the entire tray was glowing and fizzing away.

He put his head down and listened to the bubbles and pops as it fizzed, then he realised the smell was funny & had to smell them all. The experimented with mixing different colours and then pouring the vinegar soaked bicarb onto the tray. It was good fun. He ended up using his finger to draw around on the tray & mix all the bicarb in.
 

Number Hunt to Marbling Activity

Number Hunt Trail to a fun Marbling Experiment.

I started Dimples on a Number Hunt. He put on his hat & grabbed his bucket at the first arrow.

Yesterday while searching the bargain shops I came across a stick it note pad shaped as an arrow.

I started with 1 with a picture of a camera, so we grabbed One camera.

the follow was an arrow with the number 2 and a dinosaur on it, Dimples followed the direction of the arrow and came across 2 dinosaurs. He put them in his bucket.

then there was an arrow with the number 3 & a pictures of a car, he followed the arrow to 3 cars and put them in his bucket. Then there was a 4 with a stick looking thing on it :-? It was a pipe cleaner, so he followed it and found 4 pipe cleaners.

The trail led him outside where I had set up an experimental Marbling Activity, like the one we done previously experimental-marbling.
Next, an Arrow with 5 lizards leading to 5 toy lizards, 6 was knives and forks, which lead to a trail of plastic cutlery. Last was 7 with a picture of a marble which went to 7 marbles just under the table that was set up.

All the things in Dimples bucket were to be used as tools in the shaving cream tub.  I set out a tray filled with shaving cream, the paint/ink, glitter, a brush, a bucket of water (to wash excess cream off and for Dimples hands) and some paper.

First he sprinkled the glitter on and i sprinkled the ink, then he picked out some dinosaurs and lizards to trudge through the mass of cream, glitter and paint. then they walked across the paper.  The idea wasn't to put prints on the paper, this was just part of Dimples process- what he wanted to do.
The main idea was to mix around the colours before putting the paper face down in the tray to absorb the swirled ink. Just like we did in our experimental marbling.

It got messy very quickly, that's how we like it (& that's why we do a lot of our activities outdoors)
Next he used the cars to make a donuts/burn out rings. I sprinkled some more colours in it and Dimples made the cars make circular tracks.  Then the paper went face down and pressed down, then i scrapped the excess cream off the top of the paper with a card & what was left was a cool swirled pattern of ink.

Dimples tried out the forks and lightly manoeuvred them through the ink, then a rolling pin, a brush, then his fingers. Dinosaurs and cars were his favourite!

The best results came from having a dull base colour (mix one colour through all the shaving cream and smooth it all. Then using bright colours to sprinkle over the top. The mix these around a bit, but not too match that they blend. When you put your paper down, smooth it out from top down first to bottom so you have no air pockets that will leave big blank spots!

Then let it sit on it face up for a little while, less than a minute & scrape it off with cardboard of a plastic spatula or take away container lid.

with a pink background

swirls

with a grey background