By: Martianne Stanger
April showers? Bring them on! We have had our fill of cold and snow. We are ready for the rain!
That’s right. Rain.
Not only does our family enjoy many activities for all ages when warm, refreshing rains fall, but we also love the mud!
Each spring and summer, my children become happily engaged with our backyard mud kitchen. As they do, I marvel at the way they tweak the design of our outdoor play kitchen – and their use of it – to match their current interests and developmental stages. Last year, among other things, that involved lots of sorting, stacking, and imaginative play with cookie tree blocks.
Another thing that strikes me when my children play with our mud kitchen is how their friends react to it. Most love it! The combination of found items, mud and imagination bring a time-tested classic way to play, actually doing so seems “new” and “different” to some of the kids’ friends.
Their moms comment , “I never imagined my (insert name) would be so content and calm for so long.” Or, “Wow, I could bring our old plastic play kitchen outside and they might start playing with it again.” Or, “How cool that they don’t even need a real kitchen to play with.”
I am not sure why, but it seems that in the rush of modern day life, pauses to play in the mud aren’t as common as they once were. That could change this April.
Go on, enjoy some sensory fun and learning outside in a mud kitchen this spring.
Community Voices for Health 
I encourage my kids to play in the dirt! It is good for them and so much fun!
I could put this awful spring weather in England to good use. Out to the garden!
I played like this as a kid all summer long… So didymium kids… Now they are “too old” until they have kids of their own… 🙂
So great! My daughter loooooves to puddle jump and get dirty! I just have to put my anxieties aside and let it happen 😉 It’s good for them, I know!!
This looks like fun! We are avid puddle jumpers and sandbox diggers, but we haven’t spent too much time in the mud just yet. I’ll see if he wants to give it a go this afternoon. Thanks for the idea!
Hope you’re all enjoying some mud. Even though it’s been relatively dry here, my kiddoes have and the hose going b/c they miss their mud!