Welcome to our digital Stories & Crafts for preschoolers. The storytimes will include a story and a rhyme or fingerplay. This week’s theme is gardens. Let’s dig in!
Make Mud Pies
Supplies
- good clean dirt
- water
- old plates, bowls, muffin or pie tins
- sticks and spoons for stirring
- old plastic cups for pouring
- natural materials such as pebbles and leaves
- lots of imagination
Directions
Mud play is a wonderful experience for young children! It may look like a mess to adults, but look again and you’ll see it absolutely oozes with learning opportunities. When making mud pies, children have a rich sensory experience that opens wide doors to creativity and imagination.
In their dramatic play, they might bake a cake for grandma or serve tea to a queen. In doing so, they learn the elements of a story – introduction, action, conclusion – which helps later as they learn to read books. As their little fingers stir and work mud into pies or cookies or mud paintings on the sidewalk, they build strength and fine motor control for writing. It’s an open-ended process of discovery, exploration and learning that is free and available in your own backyard. So dress them in old clothes, give them a little bit of earth, a little bit of water, a pie tin or two, then stand back and watch them bloom!
Read more about the benefits of mud play.
More Fun
Books About Gardens
Mud Puddle by Robert Munsch
Roy Digs Dirt by David Shannon
Other Garden Crafts and Activities
Garden Scavenger Hunts:
Create a Spring Play Dough Garden
Watch Peppa and George help Grandpa in the garden.
Not everyone likes a muddy mess, it’s true. Some children genuinely don’t like cool wet dirt on their hands and clothes. But some love it! If your kids do, go ahead. Let them get dirty! They clean up pretty easily afterwards. They’ll be cultivating so much learning and growing while they do!
Marlana Hodgkinson
Marlana is a youth services specialist who has worked in the Kids Library for the last 15 years. She enjoys creating and learning with kids of all ages. Her favorite books all have strong heroines, dragons, and magic. When not at the library, you can often find her riding her trusty bicycle, hiking with her dog Lily, playing board games with her family, or reading another great book.