Common Questions

What is a mud kitchen?

Mud kitchens can be any outdoor play area setup to invite the mixing, mashing, and transforming of water, soil, sand, rocks or other nature treasures. Mud kitchen work stations can include a range of components including but not limited to bowls, pans, spoons, faucets, spigots, and intriguing widgets found at thrift stores. Mud kitchens are designed to invite young children to dive into outdoor nature play in whatever way is appealing to them.

What’s so great about mud?

Mud is a fantastic medium for play because it is so inviting for a wide range of ages and abilities, it opens the door to very imaginative, creative play, and it engages so many senses. And most importantly, more and more research is suggesting that exposure to dirt and mud is good for our mental and physical health!

What about the mess?

First of all, mud all washes off! But also consider that those of us who are little mess averse could simply offer a mud kitchen with nature treasures, pots and pans but no soil or water. Similarly, offering water but no soil for your children’s mud kitchen can also invite wonderful creative, sensory-rich play but with less mess than soil/mud.