We Enjoy Playing in the Ice and Snow
• when it is very cold, water freezes (gets hard), making ice, snow, sleet, and icicles.
• A blizzard is when a strong wind blows for a long time during a heavy snowstorm.
• Days are shorter, and nights are longer.
• Most plants stop growing for a while.
• Some plants and trees grow all year round, and are called “evergreens”.
• Some trees lose their leaves in the winter.
• Some animals hibernate.
• Many birds fly south (migrate) for the winter.
• We wear warmer clothing in the winter.
• We enjoy playing in the ice and snow – we build snow forts, throw snow balls, skate on ice, ski on snow.

Feeding the Birds and Squirrels Will Give Your Child Many Hours of Enjoyment

In the winter, we dress warmly. It’s better for the environment to put on a layer of long underwear rather than crank up the heat on your thermostat. It may be healthier, too. It’s less of a shock going out to the cold, when you have that extra layer of insulation next to your skin. Thermal (long) underwear comes in so many attractive colors and prints! Get a dozen pair for your child and yourself, as well. Hard-to-find flannel-lined overalls fit nicely over the thermal underwear. A long-sleeved tee-shirt,then a sweatshirt completes the layers. Don’t forget wool socks for the family. Never buy synthetic socks in the winter. Synthetics do nothing to insulate, or wick away moisture. Cotton socks are okay inside, but when you are outside, if you want your feet to stay toasty warm and dry, you must go with pure wool. They can be expensive, but if you take care of your wool socks, they will last a lot longer than cotton. I’ve heard so many people complain that they just don’t like winter – but nearly everyone of them isn’t dressed appropriately for the weather. If you dress warmly, you won’t begrudge the chilly temperatures.

Dog Sledding Can Be a Great Family Sport

For answers to all your mushing questions, you can either email me, or contact: Sled Dog Central. I’ve been mushing for about ten years, so while I don’t know all the answers, I do know several places I can go to get the answers.

The worksheets for this week were all taken from First_School.
Worksheet 1
Worksheet 2
Worksheet 3
Worksheet 4
Worksheet 5
Alphabet

All of the books that are recommended for this week can be found here, if you don’t find anything suitable at your library. When I select books, they are either ones that I have read and loved, or they have a five-star rating from parents. The music and a few seasonally appropriate toys are also found here .

Lesson Plans for Winter Week

Related Reading:
Beginning Writing
Play Areas for Encouraging Creativity
Working With the Lesson Plans

Photo Credits:
Snowy Day by Mark Evans
Chubby Squirrel by Jeremy Noble
Running Sled Dogs by Lorelei Sieja

Have you ever seen someone give a rattle to a baby? What does he do with it? First, he sees it, using his sense of sight. Then he reaches for it, takes it in his hands, using his sense of touch. He shakes it, using his sense of hearing. He mouths it, using his sense of taste. And finally, he sniffs it, using his sense of smell (although few rattles have a scent). Then he throws it away. He’s done. He’s learned all that he can learn from it. And usually, the adult picks it back up and gives it to the baby again, who throws it again. That is a fun game! He will probably never play with that rattle again, other than to throw it. This is sensory play.

To some extent, one could argue that all play is sensory play. When children play with blocks, they are touching them, and they hear them if they knock over the block tower. When children paint, they may comment on how the paint smells, or how it looks when they swirl the colors together. But to narrow sensory play down a bit, sensory play is play that engages the child to explore one or more of his senses, that is not grouped into another category of play.

Earlier, I posted an article on the Seven Areas of Creative Play:

1. Dramatic Play
2. Block Play
3. Outdoor Play (also called Large Muscle play)
4. Art
5. Music
6. Books
7. Table Toys (also called Small Muscle Play, or manipulatives)

Now, I’d like to add the eighth category – Sensory Play.

Sensory play is often referred to as “messy play”.

Children can usually make a mess no matter what they are playing! But some sensory activities are inherently messy. Still, this area is critical to your child’s growth and development. You will need a bin, table, or area designated for sensory play. Day care centers usually have a sand play table, or a sand & water play table, which can double as the sensory table. At home, parents may wish to buy an inexpensive child’s splash pool – the smallest one available, 3 feet in diameter is fine. Put it on the living room carpet on top of an old shower curtain, to facilitate with clean-up. In warm weather, you can move the splash pool/sensory table out to the yard or patio.

Here is a partial list of activities for the splash pool/sensory play table. Once you get started, your own imagination will help you come up with dozens more. I hope you’ll share them with us here in the comments section beneath this post. Remember, for your child to get the most benefit from this play, you need to play with him. You need to speak with him, engage him in conversation. Ask him thoughtful questions. “How does this FEEL? How does this SMELL? Can you tell me how it SOUNDS? This is safe to taste, you may taste this. How does it TASTE? What does it look like?”

1. Sand. You can have a little sandbox inside. Sand is such a wonderful toy – it is ancient and universal. It feels cool in the morning shade, and warm in the afternoon sun. It packs better when it is damp. It washes away (erodes) in the rain. It doesn’t usually have a smell, but sometimes sand at the beach smells fishy. It feels rough. It’s fun to roll in! (outside!). When you have a little sandbox inside, the child plays differently than in the backyard sandbox. Outside he can sit in it, and push big trucks, and dig big holes. Inside, it is more fun to pour sand from a pitcher, or push little matchbox-sized construction trucks through it.
2. Water. If you run a preschool or daycare, you will want to have water play available. If you are teaching your little one at home, then he will get enough water play in the bathtub. For more information on the importance of water play, click here.

Girl Playing in Rice
3. Rice. Rice can be an interesting change from sand. It won’t make a sand castle, but it does pour nicely through a toy pitcher. It will make the wheels spin on a water wheel toy. It is fun to smoosh your hands in, scoop it, dump it, rearrange it… and it vacuums up better than sand. Pour about 30 pounds of clean, dry white rice into your splash pool. Add some measuring cups and spoons, toy dishes, small cars, etc. Your child will enjoy this for an entire week, I’m sure! By then you’ll be sick of vacuuming up the rice. Put it away, but save it to bring it back out on a rainy day when you really need to keep your child amused. You can add more to this by coloring the rice. Read how to do that here.
4. Fall leaves. In the fall, bring in a bag full of autumn leaves. Add whatever is available in your area. Add small sticks, acorns, nuts, pinecones, small branches of pine boughs, etc. Your child may just touch things, smell them, lick them (ick!), etc. Or he may want to bring his toy cars to the table, and build forts for toy plastic animals. Let him explore the textures of these natural items. When you are about to empty this sensory activity, press the leaves for a future art project.
5. Winter snow. Bring in a bucket full of snow. Let your child touch it and taste it. Smell it. Look at it closely. Use a magnifying glass. Put some in a glass and watch it melt. Dump small plastic penguins or whales in the snow, and let child play. Give him a pair of mittens and let him build a small snow fort for toy people. Talk about cold, hot, soft, hard, and other descriptive words.
6. Spring Flowers. Bring in a bucket of potting soil. Let child play in that. Add a bit of water, let him play in the mud. Let him play with small garden tools, or with his construction trucks again. When the mud play is over, then plant some bean seeds in the sensory table. Soak the beans overnight in water before you plant them – to speed up germination. Beans grow fast, and are easy to see. You and your child can pull up a bean plant every couple of days to examine the changes (plant plenty of seeds!). At first, the bean shell swells and splits. Then you can see a tiny bean plant folded up inside the seed! Then you’ll see the root shoot out, and then a stem with leaves. It never gets old. If you’re tired of the muddy splash pool, you can move the surviving bean seeds to paper cups or pots. Wash out the splash pool in the yard with a hose, for the next activity.
7. Bubbles. Best done outside! Mix warm water, dish detergent, and a bit of glycerin into your splash pool. Put your child in a swim suit, and set him outside with various bubble-blowing wands or toys. Supervise! Children can drown in an inch of water. Bubbles are great for sensory play. If you use scented dish soap, your bubble stuff will smell nice. Bubbles can have all the colors of the rainbow in them. They feel slippery. They taste soapy. Can you catch one without popping it?
8. Ooblech. This is very, very messy! But great fun for kids of all ages. You might want to mix this in a smaller area than the splash pool/sensory table. You could sit your child at a picnic table OUTSIDE, and give him a cookie sheet or cake pan half-full of oobleck. For more fun, read Dr. Seuss’s classic tale of Bartholomew and the Oobleck first. Oobleck is made with cornstarch and water. For more specific directions, click here.
9. Ice. While you really have to wait for winter to do the snow activity, thanks to freezers, you can do ice any time. It might be more fun to do it on the hot days in summer. Dump clumps of ice in the sensory table. Let child touch them, lick them, sniff them, and explore them. Then, child could drop droplets of colored water on the ice to create patterns or mix colors. Child could also shake salt on the ice to see what happens. (The ice starts to melt). You can extend this activity by placing tiny plastic toys in an ice cube tray, filling it with water and freezing them. The child can play explorer, or paleontologist, by extracting the toys from the ice with a toy mallet.
10. Packing Peanuts. Also, very messy! But right after Christmas you may have an excess of these terribly non-earth friendly styrofoam pieces laying around. Dump them all in the splash pool/sensory table, and let your child’s imagination run wild. He can pretend it is snow. Dress up in mittens and a hat and scarf, and sit in the “snow” to look at picture books, like Alvin Tresselt’s classic, “The Mitten”.
11. Put left-over wrapping paper in the sensory table. Children can rip it, cut it, make collages out of it. They can pretend to wrap up their toys in it. They will have almost as much fun with the left-over wrappings as they have with their Christmas toys.
12. Coffee grounds. Save your coffee grounds for several weeks. Set them out daily to dry, then put them in a bag to save them. When you have enough, put them in the sensory table. Coffee grounds have a different texture and a pleasant smell. Children will play in it like sand.
13. Seashells. You’re lucky if you live by the sea and can get a good supply of these for free. Otherwise, craft stores now stock them. Try to get a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. You can scatter just seashells, or put sand in the bottom of the table and scatter the shells on top of the sand.
14. Oatmeal. Plain, raw, uncooked, oatmeal. Can be poured, scooped, measured, or moved around with toy trucks. Shakes off clothing well, and vacuums up almost as well as rice. One mom I met kept a huge oatmeal “sandbox” in her spare bedroom for her two young sons.

Legos Stimulate Creativity, While Helping to Develop Small Motor Control
15. Legos. You need to be the judge if your child is ready for small LEGOS yet. Younger children can use DUPLOS. Sometime between the age of three and four, many children are ready to play with the smaller legos. If you dump an assortment in the sensory table, they can build and build, and not have to pick up! An alternative, is to let your child play with legos on a sheet. Then when it is time to clean up, you lift up the four corners of the sheet, and put everything into a box together. Little legos are so much fun, but very boring to pick up. You could actually make a lego mat, by cutting the sheet into a circle, sewing 1″ rings around the edge, and threading a cord through the rings. Then just pull the drawstring together at clean-up time.
16. Shredded paper. This is very interesting to play in, but also very messy. Little paper shreds stick with static electricity to your hair, clothes, and carpet. You’ll want to vacuum up your child when he’s through! I hid mini candy canes in shredded paper for a Christmas time activity at my preschool.
17. Dried corn. This is great for indoor play, especially for younger toddlers. It sweeps up better than it vacuums. You can get huge sacks of dried corn at feed stores for about $5.00. Some pet supply stores in the cities will also stock dried corn. After your child has scooped it, measured it, poured it, patted it, sniffed it, tasted it (ick), and you no longer want it in your house, then you can take it to a park to feed it to the ducks. Corn is a bit more nutritious for them than chunks of stale white bread.
18. Easter grass. This is a good seasonal activity. Let your child play with the Easter grass. He can bury plastic Easter eggs in it, or small toys. Let him glue it to construction paper at art time. It comes in many colors and textures. Some are very shiny and pretty. Some now are edible.
19. Nuts. Put an assortment of nuts in their shells in the sensory table. (Watch out for signs of a nut allergy in your child! One in one-hundred children are allergic to nuts. Some nut allergies are life-threatening.) Talk about the textures of the different nuts. How do they smell? Some are smooth, some are rough. Some are small, some are quite large. Get a nut cracker, and sit with your child as you crack open some nuts and taste them. Put the cracked nut shells back in the sensory table. Play with them until you are bored with them, or until you’ve eaten them all! Then glue some nut shells on cardboard in a mosaic, and clean up the sensory table for the next activity.
20. Pudding. Mix up a package of instant pudding, and let your child “fingerpaint” with it. You might want to put this in a smaller container, rather than the splash pool, unless you run a day care and plan to mix up several boxes. This is one sensory activity where you can encourage tasting! Have children wash their hands before playing there.
21. Coins. Supervise! A child can swallow a penny, and get copper poisoning. Dump your change jar into a bowl with rubbing alcohol to clean them somewhat. Money can carry many germs. Then, dump the clean, dry coins into the sensory table. Talk about colors, shapes, sizes, textures, etc. Let children sort the coins. Put the silver ones here, the copper ones here…
22. Magnets and paper clips. Dump several large boxes of plain paper clips into the sensory table. Add some large magnets. Let children explore, discover how magnets will push against each other, or pull together. How many paper clips can each magnet lift? Try adding other metal items to the sensory table. Will the magnets lift pop cans? Toy cars? Pennies?
23. Play dough. You can make quantities of home-made playdough. Add different scents to it – put vanilla in one batch and color it brown. Substitute Banana flavoring for the vanilla in the next batch, and color it yellow. Put peppermint flavoring in a third batch and color it red or green. Put almond flavoring in a batch, and chose a color to color it . You can put grape Kool-aid powder in another batch, skipping the vanilla (use plain kool-aid, not the kind with sugar in it.). Put all the colors of playdough out at once, and all the playdough toys. Let your child smell them, taste them, mush them around and mix them together. Cover the playdough up in air-tight containers when not in use. Add cookie cutters, rolling pins, and other playdough toys as needed.
    
24. Dry instant mashed potatoes. Start with the dry mashed potato flakes. Have your child experience that. Then slowly add some warm water and moosh that around. Add more warm water, and moosh. Can add warm, colored water – green on St. Patrick’s Day, orange for Halloween, etc. Add enough warm water until all the flakes are moistened, and potatoes are thick and warm and mushy. Continue to play, taste, mush, mix, and explore. Can hide clean, small toys in the mush. Can play with ice cream scoops and toy doll dishes. When done, dump the mush in the garbage and hose off the pool outside.

These are just a few of the hundreds of ideas you can use in your sensory play area. Next, you can try combining them. Add glitter to your sand table. Hide coins in the dry corn. Float ice in your water table.

Anything you see that might have an interesting smell, texture, taste, sound, or is visually stimulating, can have potential for the sensory table, if you deem it to be safe for children.

Have fun! Your child will.

Some materials for Sensory Play:

Related Reading:
Sensory Play
Sight lesson plans
Sound lesson plans
Taste lesson plans
Touch lesson plans

Photo Credits:
Baby with Rattle: by Ian Watson
Girl Playing in Rice: by Grandma Musher
Boy with Legos: by Mads Boedker

If you place your Sensory Area in the house, you can spread a sheet or shower curtain under it, to aid in clean-up.

Coloring Rice is Super Easy All you need is: rice rubbing alcohol tempra paint or food coloring zip-lock bag paper towel You’ll color it in batches, so to color enough to fill a sensory table could take a while.	Ingredients for Coloring Rice
Put Rice in Zip Bag Add a splash of rubbing alcohol. I never measure anything – why waste a perfectly clean measuring spoon? But if you’d like some general idea, try using about a teaspoon or two of the alcohol per cup of rice. If you use a larger zip bag, you can do several cups of rice at once.	Rubbing Alcohol Speeds Up Drying Time
Add Paint You can use liquid tempra paint or food coloring. I chose green tempra paint this time – as my grandchild is going to play in it with construction trucks. I suppose brown for dirt would have been better than grass green!	Add Paint or Vibrant Food Coloring
Seal Bag, Mush Contents Close bag tightly. Mush the bag to mix the paint, alcohol, and rice thoroughly.	Mush Bag to Spread Paint Evenly
Air Dry Spread the colored rice on a paper towel to air dry. It must be completely dry, or it rub off on your child’s hands when he plays in it. The alcohol helps it to dry faster. It should be dry enough in a few hours. Now you can add more rice, alcohol, and paint to the used zip bag to make the next batch. Keep repeating these steps until you’ve colored a sufficient quantity for play. Twenty pounds of rice is enough for one child. Thirty to forty pounds will work in a sensory table that accommodates four children.	Spread Colored Rice on Paper Towels Until Dry
Ready For Play Once dry, pour into the sensory table (or splash pool, as pictured at the top) and add toys. Children will supply the creative play.	Finished Colored Rice

Related Articles:
Sensory Play
Sensory Activities for Early Childhood
Home-Made Playdough Recipes

Photo Credits:
Girl in Rice: by Grandma Musher
Remaining Photos: by Lorelei Sieja

Water play can be grouped into the “sensory play” category. The young child explores water with his senses. He uses his sense of touch as he slaps it, splashes it, dunks his head in it, pours it from a pitcher, and fills his toys with it. He uses his sense of taste more often than you’d like, as he drinks his bath water. He uses his sense of sight, as he studies water’s natural properties – how it splashes, how it makes waves. He uses his sense of hearing as he listens to the sound of splashing. The only sense he may not use much is his sense of smell, but even that can come into play if you add scented bubble bath or bar soap.

Besides the sensory experience, water can be a pre-math activity, as the child fills gradated measuring cups and spoons. He will learn that a large cup of water will not all fit into a smaller cup. He won’t understand the complexities of fluid dynamics, but later, if he takes up that field of study in college, he will remember the properties of water from his childhood play.

You can add to the child’s experience of water play simply by changing the toys he takes into the bathtub. There are many on the market now, some provide more play value than others. You don’t have to buy expensive toys, though, as water play can be fun with nothing more than empty dish soap bottles, some wash clothes, and a funnel or two from your kitchen. If you do invest in water toys, remember that mold absolutely loves damp things in dark spaces, so make sure to let the toys drain well and put them somewhere to dry out between baths. Occasionally rinse them in a mild bleach and water solution to kill any mold spores. (I prefer a white vinegar and water solution for controlling mold, as it is more earth-friendly).

What bath toys to buy? Again, you can go back to the eight basic areas of play: Dramatic Play, Block Play, Large Muscle Play, Sensory Play, Art, Music, Books, and Table Games (or small muscle play).

For dramatic play, you can purchase toys that encourage imaginative role-playing games. These types of tub toys have little people or animals or cars or cities. Lots of pieces, but hours of fun.

Blocks: You can buy Wood Foam Blocks that somewhat stick to the tub surround. They may stick two or three tall as they float, but they will tip over before building a tall stack.

Large Muscle Play is somewhat limited by the dimensions of the tub. You don’t want your child jumping around and risk a fall-related injury! But there are baskeball tub toys. One even has a battery-operated noise of a crowd cheering every time the basketball makes it through the hoop.

Bathtub Play is Good, Clean Fun

Art: Bath Tub Crayons are so much fun! Now you can even find bathtub Finger Paints and face paint. Who knew getting clean could be so much fun!

Music: Alex Toys markets a tub symphony. This set has a xylophone, drum, mallets and flutes. I haven’t tried it yet, but it received a five-star rating from the parents who reviewed it. I plan to get this for my granddaughter, as I’m sure she will love it, too.

Books: I have seen some baby books made in durable vinyl that my granddaughter eventually took into the bath tub. This isn’t really an area where I feel it is important to have books, though. But if you have a sick or tired child, you might read them a picture book while they soak in the tub.

Small motor Play: this may overlap with the dramatic play toys, as small motor play (Table Toys) are any game with tiny pieces. You can build with legos in the tub, but they can also fit down the drain. Perhaps it would be better to build with duplos, even when the child is old enough for the smaller lego bricks. The Reeve and Jones Water Works toy is a great example of small-motor play. The child can rearrange the water pipes into unique designs, then pour tub water through the water wheel and watch it cascade down. I’d give this toy two thumbs up!

You don’t need to have an enormous toy chest. Just pick a few bath toys, and alternate them regularly. Don’t let the child have every toy every bath. He’ll never play with them all before the water cools off, and bath time will just be another battle to pick up his toys.

Remember SAFETY! A child can drown in an inch or two of water! Stay in the bathroom with him, or as he grows older, stay very near and listen diligently. You can sit on the stool and read a book, or take his bath time to spruce up the bathroom and make it nice and clean. You can get an older child or spouse to sit in the bathroom with your preschooler. An ounce of prevention will save a pounding heartache.

An inexpensive Colander Becomes a Great Tub Toy

Related Reading:
Wet and Wild: benefits of water play
Sensory Play
Play Areas for Encouraging Creativity

Photo Credits:
Bath Puppy: by abbybatchelder
Bubble Bath: by ~My Aim Is True~
Bath Boy: by Chimothy27

Exploring the World Through the Sense of Sight

First they may see something new, using their sense of sight. Then they will want to reach out and touch it – their sense of touch. They will shake it, to discover if it makes a sound – their sense of hearing. Then they bring it close to their face, and will smell and taste it, using two more senses. This is the way infants, toddlers, and preschool children learn. Once children learn how to read, then they may learn by reading about something, but it is still best whenever practical, to involve two or more senses in the learning process. You can help your young child by teaching him about his five senses, and giving him lots of experiences to use those senses.

Children Love to Play Looking Games

You can help them to learn the vocabulary to describe what they are seeing. Whenever you have a moment to talk with him, ask him to describe how something looks. You can play word games with him, like “I spy” and “I’m thinking of something”. Play the card game Memory – looking for matched pairs of things. Teach him to recognize colors – but go beyond the basic eight crayola colors! Teach him to notice different shades of red, like crimson, rose, burgundy and salmon. Help him to see the differences between two similar objects. This is an important skill, as the letters d, p, q, and b are all very similar indeed!

Help Your Child Develop His Sense of Hearing

Can You Hear Me Now?

There are some studies which may indicate that listening to classical music can actually raise your child’s I.Q. This is known as the Mozart Effect, if you’d like to read more about it. I’m not sure if the results of the study are even important. You certainly can’t harm your child by playing classical music for him, so go ahead and give it a try!

You can play various listening games to help your child develop his sense of hearing. Classic games like “Simon Says” and “Mother May I” require attentive listening. There are new lotto games available that has the child listening to various common sounds – like a sheep baaing, a cow mooing, or a man snoring – and then cover that picture on his playing board.

Every Meal is a Discovery of Taste

Yummy!

Don’t forget to teach your child when it’s NOT appropriate to taste something! If you garden, you need to teach him that some parts of some plants are not good to eat. Don’t let him eat mushrooms he’s picked in the yard, or chow down on crickets (yuck!) whether they’ve been sprayed with insecticide or not! (Okay, my youngest ate a lot of crickets in her toddler years).

The Sense of Smell is Often the Poorest Developed Sense

Most children’s toys have no real smell. Sometimes picture books or stickers may have a “scratch and sniff” feature, but it quickly wears out. Some things are not safe to smell, like ammonia or bleach. But you can still help your child develop this sense. Again, at every meal, ask him to smell the food and describe what it smells like. When you’re baking a savory roast, help him to identify that scent. When you wash his hair with lavender shampoo, help him to identify that scent. Let him smell your perfume, or an onion when you are slicing it. You can even make a smelling game. Collect a dozen small uniform containers, like empty plastic film cans. Then put six pairs of different scents into the containers. Cover the top with gauze, so the child cannot see what’s inside, but can smell it. Have him sniff each can, and match them up accordingly. You could put a pair of cotton balls sprayed with perfume in two, a pair of onion slices in two more, and so forth. This game will eventually lose it’s potency, but the ingredients are cheap enough that you can refresh it periodically.

Children Love to Touch Things

Bunny Fur is Soft

You might put a tray of different objects out for your child to touch. One day you might do “prickly” and put out a whole pineapple, a brush curler, a pine cone, pine needles, hair brushes, etc. Let your child touch them, play with them, and describe them to you. Help him to learn new words to describe them. Then a few days later, repeat this activity with “soft” things, like cotton balls, fur scraps, velvet, a feather.

Set Aside a Special Place for a Sensory Table

In a Day Care Center, this might be referred to as a Sand/Water Play table, but you can put so much more than sand or water in it. In fact, there are so many activities to do with this, that I will put it in another post.

Teaching your preschooler doesn’t have to be hard, or expensive. It means just being there, and being alert for the teachable moments in his life.

Related Reading:
Sensory Play Activities
Twelve Fun Sensory Play Activities for Preschool
The Importance of Sensory Play in the Preschool

Lesson Plans on the Senses:
Sight
Sound
Touch
Taste

Photo Credits:
Top:photo by Aaron Escobar
Upper middle:photo by Tony Crider
Lower middle:photo by Pink Sherbert
Bottom: photo by K.H.Rawlings

With the spring comes the mud. We lived down south for eight years, and springs there were absolutely stunning. There’d be redbud trees and wisteria and apple blossoms and tons of flowers, and spring actually lasted a couple of months, like it’s supposed to on the calendar. Not so up here. There are only a few weeks between winter and the humidity and heat of summer, and those weeks are marked by mud. Mud everywhere! You can’t walk anywhere without stepping in it.

Mud is a Readily Available, Cheap and Educational Toy

There is some good to my tale, though. Mud is a wonderful toy! It’s cheap, plentiful, and educational! And kids really do need to get dirty; that’s why God made them washable.

Sensory Play

Here are a few suggested mud activities to get your imagination going:

1. Mud cakes.  Bring your preschooler / toddler outside with a jug of water and some toy dishes.  Let him make mud cakes.  He can set the pans in the sunshine to “bake”.  Then serve the mud cakes to a favorite (washable) toy or two.
2. Construction.  Bring out some Tonka trucks, or the smaller matchbox size construction vehicles, a jug of water and some small shoves or spades.  Designate an area that is okay to dig up (not the rose bushes).  Let your child push, dig, carry away, and remodel the area with his toys.  Complete the activity by serving a lunch in a workman’s lunch pail and eat it outside.
3. Farm.  Bring out plastic farm animals, small tractors and the jug of water (to soften hard mud, or rinse off muddy toys before coming in).  Let child design a farm with the tractor.  “Plant” crops by sticking blades of grass of stems of leaves into the mud upright.  Build fenced enclosures with sticks plopped into the ground.  “Feed” the animals acorns or whatever nut falls to the ground in your yard.
4. Art.  Bring out wide paint brushes and jug of water.  Let child mix water in a mud hole and paint the sidewalk with it.  Rinse clean with a hose.
5. Dug out.  If you have the room, give your child a spot where he can dig a hole big enough to hide inside.  Kids absolutely love hidey-holes!  They are just as much fun as a tree house, but they can’t fall out of them.  Later you can help your child build a roof by nailing some boards together.  And much later, when your child has outgrown the dugout, you can turn it into a duck pond or plant a tree.
6. Mud bath.  Let your child fill a hole with some water and splash in it, and get totally completely filthy.  Talk with him about what it feels like.  Help him learn new words to describe it, like squish and mushy.  Paint mud on his face and arms.  Take a mud bath with him.  Some people pay lots of money for this, and you can do it to yourself for free!  Don’t forget to take some pictures.  Your relatives will think you’ve lost your sanity, but your children will think you are the coolest mom on the planet.

Finally, don’t forget to wash up.  You can hose off the worst of it outside, then rinse off in a shower, and finish off with a bubble bath soak to get all the grime out from beneath their fingernails.  You’ve just created some wonderful memories, helped your child engage in sensory activities, and it didn’t cost a dime.

Kids Need to Get Dirty

Related Reading:
Water Play
Sand Play
Child’s Play

Photo Credits:
Top:http://www.flickr.com/photos/kessiye/ / CC BY 2.0
Middle:http://www.flickr.com/photos/mymollypop/ / CC BY 2.0
Bottom:http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimmiehomeschoolmom/ / CC BY 2.0