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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Family Tree: Our Land-mark

A Real Family Tree in the Outdoors

 

Dimples has decorated a few of the rainbow trees with his handprints. There is one blank tree that will be Purple very soon.

 

Once again, we have been in the outdoors painting trees on our property.

This time we did a family tree.  Something a little more meaningful and fun.

Painting the tree

 

Last year some time we Painted this tree, you can see it here: adventuresathomewithmum painting-tree it lasted the weather, lasted through Summer and didn't fade. It wasn't until autumn that the tree started to shed its top layer of bark and most of the painting came off with the bark.

 

Its tough work, we used exterior paint left over from our Backyard Balance stumps and we only needed one coat.

Here we are again, painting big trees, Beautiful rainbow trees.  This time with something more meaningful and bright.  Ofcourse it wont last but for a year or so it will make the property look bright and be a family reminder of the fun things we do together.  

 

Once it was dry we put Black handprints on it and I named and dated them. It didnt take long to dry in the sun.

We have even done a foot print Family tree.
 

Dimples has a funny very vocal cow 'cackle' who had to come see what we were doing (and lick the paint) 

 

Happy Outdoor Adventures  :)

If your after more outdoor activities, click on my outdoor tab under my header at the top of the page.

Wombat Stew

Do you bring your stories to life?  We do!
Lately we have taken this to another level.
This is how we bought Wombat Stew to life using pretend play & a little imagination.



Wombat Stew



Reading is much more interesting and intriguing to children when you use exciting faces, character voices and engage them in the process.  Pointing to the words as reading them, discussing what they think will happen or for older children, getting them to fill in the blanks. I do this often with Dimples, reading a familiar sentence then pointing to the last word and pausing so he can finish it.


Our new thing though, is playing out stories through dress ups or pretend play.  We did this with The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, one of our favourites.  One of Dimples other favourites is "Wombat Stew" By Marcia Vaughan and Pamela Lofts.
Have you heard of it? I think it is an Australian Classic. Well written, great illustrations, up beat, fun, educational and it rhymes. Dimples sings along to the dingos chant and gets right into it, he finds the ending hilarious every time.



We bought this story alive by making our very own wombat stew, Dimples was the Dingo and had a big fat wombat reading to stew up. I gave him some blue cellophane that he cut up and put in a large laundry tub,  I mean into the bubbling billy. We collected some Mud from the Platypus, Some feathers for the Emu, Some Plastic flies from the Blue tongue Lizard, Plastic creepy crawlies from the Echidna, and Real Gum nuts from the Koala.



 

All our ingredients were placed out on Dimples table and he got his stuffed toys ready. He had most of them but his echidna was missing in action. We spent all morning looking for it, it didn't turn up until later that day when we weren't looking, I found it hidden in a jacket in my wardrobe, go figure!


Dimples sat his fat wombat ready as he stirred the billy and chanted "righto, in  they go!" along with the story as he put in the ingredients.  All the while the kookaburra sat by and watched, just like in the illustrations.


It was funny to see Dimples get right into it and act like the dingo, his eyes lite up as waited for me to read the next part of the story, of course he already knew which ingredient was going to be next but waited patiently stirring the billy.



At the ending Dimples tasted his stew, not really, but he went to the extent of getting mud on his face. " Argowwwwwwwwweeeeee, I've been poisoned, You've tricked me!" He screamed and then ran off, hands waving in the air and his tongue poking out. Never again to sing - " Wombat stew, Wombat Stew, Gooey, Brewy, Yummy, Chewy, Wombat Stew!"
It was awesome fun and he played with his Wombat Brew for a while after chatting away to himself. I'd here the occasional "righto in they go!" as he inspected the ingredients.

Happy Adventures :)

Our Hidden Happy Camper

Our Hidden Happy Camper is a gag man type of Dummy I guess would be the best description, Dimples and myself made him so he could sit on our property in the bush, under a large Sumac tree in the middle of a paddock, viewable to the road. 

He will be particularly noticeable in Summer and Autumn when the leaves on the tree go from Orange to Red, its the only tree like this in the middle of a very green bush so it stands out as you drive past anyway but now we have something more fun that will catch peoples eye.

Strange?  I know, but I like to think that passes by and visitors get a laugh or are totally confused as to why a man is sitting all on his lonesome in the middle of a paddock with his beer (especially if it happened to be raining at the time).

We threw him together over the weekend, it took me a couple of hours with the help of Dimples.

First we hammered his farm together out of scrap wood.

Using old stockings we stuffed his legs with foam, put some old jeans on him.

Then I used an old towels to wrap around his torso, taped it up and threw on an old shirt, more foam stuffing and a flannelet shirt on top.

Dimples had to cuddle him and sit on his lap at this point, he was quite cuddly.

His hands are simply washing up gloves turned insides out and with wire through them, then stuffed with foam. The wire worked well to turn his fingers into a wave and so we could tie the other around his beer bottle.

Then a old pair of boots tied around the stockings tight and we took him and his head for a drive out to the farm.

There were some strange looks as people seen a random body waving in the back of the Ute.

We used an old dummy head that hair dressers used but you could use one of those kids doll hair play heads or make a scare crow type head with a drawn on face.  Add a hat, a BBQ and a table for his beers to sit on and there you have it. A happy camper.

We sat him in the paddock, he is far enough from the road that you can see him clearly but not well enough to see the details that he is a doll.

He is positioned in a spot so that passers by will see him sitting there but only for a few seconds before they continue on into the bush so they wont have time to turn around and have a good look.  We plan on making a girl in the future. maybe swinging in the tree?

Happy Adventures :)

Mud is good for you, right?

Playing in the Mud: Our Mud Pies.

In Australia at the moment we have had a record amount of rain, with no break from the wet for over a week we have been doing lots of things inside and I was slowly running out of ideas and motivation as inside play for so long can become very mentally draining.

I promised Dimples that when the rain stopped we could play in the mud and make mud pies.

When the rain stopped for a short while over the weekend we were straight out there.

I gave dimples a couple of old containers and some digging tools. I put a heap of mud into a container next to his play surface and he got busy making me some mud pies, he put grass sprinkles on top with a few stones. mixed it all up and splatted it around until he found a worm to play with, then he let it go free.

Enough with the tools, he went hands first squishing it in his hands, squeezing it through his closed fist, splatting it into the bowl, tipping it out, mixing it with more water, playing with worms, and burying his hand under the mud. If he found any dirt chunks he made sure they were smoothed right out. It was a lot of fun!

By the end of it he was stomping and jumping in the mud puddle.

To tell you the truth I don't know why we haven't done this before, it was too easy to throw his clothes straight in to the laundry tub for a wash and take him in for a quick warm bath before the rains hit again.

Did you know that playing in the dirt & mud is good for kids.

I think with the modern day plastic toys, cool kids movies and all the stress about cleanliness mothers forget that the most simplest fun can be had with some tools and a bit of dirt.

If you give your child some old pots and plates, cooking utensils and tools with a bucket of wet dirt then let them go without stressing over how dirty their clothes will get or if they will rub mud in their hair you will find quite possibly that they will have fun for hours.

I recently read an article about the benefits of playing in the dirt, a-dirty-kid-is-a-happy-kid and I must admit I was surprised about how good it actually is. I knew it was great for sensory and tactile abilities but did you know that the (good) living bacteria in dirt can help improve mood, has been linked to higher iq's and boosts a child's immune system.  So now you have an excuse to let your kids get dirty and play in the mud!

 

Another thing that I must point out, that i personally think is very important is that this dirty messy fun play builds a stronger bond with nature and the outdoors which is very important in raising the next generation. With all the technology, on line activities, video games, cool kids movies and a million reasons to sit in front of a screen for most of the day parents need to be reminded of how beneficial outdoor play is in the long run, it can influence the health and well being of a little person by reinforcing that being active and outdoors is alot of fun and is really enjoyable.

If you have a chance check out the article above, a dirty kid is a happy kid and this one, let-your-kids-get-dirty. and the mud center for info on the benefits of playing in dirt and some mud ideas.