Summer Messy Play Activities for Preschoolers

Fun In The Sun - 6 Tips For Creating A Mud Kitchen For Your Kids

Kids love mud! And as dirty as they may get, it’s time to advocate messy play so they can learn new skills the fun way. The fastest and easiest way to encourage your kids to get outdoors is to build them a mud kitchen.They'll be tripping over each other to get outside

Building your own mud kitchen is a creative, cost-effective way of enabling messy play for your kids while saving money on an expensive play kitchen. 

You can build your mud kitchen in your own way, and in the end, your kids will have the perfect environment in which to get their hands dirty anytime.

This post contains Amazon affiliate links for your convenience.

Photo: Jelleke Vanooteghem/Unsplash

Six tips to create your own mud kitchen

1. Use What You’ve Got

Poke around your garage and see what you can recycle to save money on your mud kitchen. You can use wood, recycled pallets, and old timber for the construction. Old cookware and bakeware, utensils, and decorations can also be used to finish out the kitchen,

Remember, the idea is to ignite your child’s imagination, so your DIY mud kitchen doesn’t need to resemble a brand-new toy kitchen set. 

2. Stove Tops Add to The Fun

While it’s great to leave some things up to the imagination, it’s a good idea to make your play kitchen resemble a real kitchen by creating a stove top. You can paint the burners on a piece of timber or wood, and you can even add broken or thrifted appliances to your outdoor kitchen to enhance its appearance. You can also use good, old cardboard to create a play stove.

3. Bake Mud Cakes

The fun part of having a mud kitchen is that your kids get to play with mud and get as dirty as they want. All you need to make mud cakes is some sand or soil and water. You can use old cookware and bake ware to contain them and shape them like cakes and cupcakes.

Parents can get involved by showing kids how to create funky-shaped cookies with cookie cutters and molds or add colored pasta to the mud for added texture. This kind of sensory play is an important part of childhood development, but above all, it’s a whole lot of fun.

Pistachio Pudding Play Dough

4. Set the Table

A mud kitchen is a fun way to teach your child table manners. Guide your preschoolers through setting a table and laying out the dishes. Show them the way to arrange cutlery and allow your children to bring some garden leaves to create napkins for a rustic table setting.

5. Add a Sink

Since you’ve introduced messy play to your preschoolers with colored pasta and mud cakes, it’s a good idea to take care of the cleanup. The most logical way to do this is to add a sink to your mud kitchen! To create your sink, use a silver or grey bucket and fill it with water or a big flower put with the bottom plugged works nicely too.

Add a hose in the bucket so that there’s an accessible faucet. This is a great way to teach children how to clean up after themselves. Add some dish washing liquid and a sponge so you can wash all the cookware the kids used before bringing it back into the house!

How to Make your own Dish Washing Soap

6. Dress For The Occasion

Every chef needs a chef’s hat and apron, so make sure to get these for your child. They will love it! Plus, the apron will offer some protection from mud splatter while playing. Rubber boots are a good idea too. Preschool age kids and toddlers love to wear galoshes!

How to Make your own Chef Hat

 

Have fun with your kiddos and their mud kitchen. You may want to wear some rubber boots yourself! Encourage your children to enjoy free and imaginative play, and you can bet they’ll learn tons of kitchen tricks in the process. Pretend play is the best way to learn!

Recommended Reading:

Pretend Play and Play Date Ideas from Adventures of Kids Creative Chaos

Fun Books about Galoshes from Amazon

Ravioli Recipe with Creative Twists

Make Mealtime Meaningful this Holiday Season

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Lipton. The opinions and text are all mine.

Refreshing iced tea is the perfect accompaniment to a meaningful mealtime with family and friends. Bring your family together to make a fun meal and take a break from the hustle and bustle the holidays. Slow down, and laugh together over a bottle of Lipton Peach Tea Flavored Iced Tea and these ravioli recipes with a creative twist. Enjoy!

Ravioli Dessert Recipe Reinvented.

Activities: 10 Fun Things to Make at Home with Kids of all Ages

Stuck Inside on a Snowy or Rainy Day? Make staying at Home with the Kids a fun adventure with these Activities

In this list of 10 fun things to make at home, we've included something for boys, girls, preschooler, and teens. Kids of all ages will enjoy these fun activities to do inside on a rainy or snowy day! Best of all, you don't need a lot of fancy supplies or expert crafting skills.

1. Make a homemade lava lamp minus the light - but grab your flashlight to illuminate it. Click the link above to see a YouTube Tutorial. If you aren't so diy-iee or crafty try this kit from ALEX® Toys - Make your own Lava Lamp at Home.

Make a Lava Lamp at home with a few supplies or use this kit from Alex Toys.

2. Make Homemade Rainbow Slushies at home. Slushes, Slush, Slushy, Icee, whatever you call it - you can make a fun party one at home with popsicles!

Make a slush drink at home for a birthday party.

3. This Gift bag purse can be fun for little girls or teens. Do an extra good job, and it makes a great coin purse. So, for a fun teen birthday party activity recycle the gift bags and make purses for kids.

Girls' Birthday Party activity to make at home.

4. Cardboard Play Kitchen - Save Money and Make your own pretend stove at home.

Make a stove at home with a cardboard box and wrapping paper.

5. Make a Homemade sleeping Mask like this one from Henry Happened.

Want to know how to make a homemade sleeping mask? Click the link above. This is a great activity for a pre-teen or teen girl's birthday party.

6. Make an Art Exhibit at Home How about having a an Art Exhibit at home. Have the kids each draw their favorite cartoon characters and place them on display. This is a fun Art Lesson for Kids.

This is from Bunsella.com Use clay or markers to create your own art exhibit at home. Give the kids ribbons to vote for their favorite entry.

7.Make your own Homemade Bath Crayons at home from Teach Beside Me

See the link above to learn how to make these soap bath crayons from Teach Beside Me blog. The kids will love this fun bath time activity.

8. That reminds me of our Fun Shaped Crayons in Soap/Candy Molds. Crayons are a fun thing to make at home.

Make your own fun shaped crayons at home.

9. Make Mini Cheeseburgers at home to eat after you craft up all of these other ideas!

10. You can make metal butterflies at home using Pop cans. butterflies for Mobile. 

Make metal butterflies like these from Gingerbread and Snowflakes.

More fun things you can make at home

Homemade Doughnuts - you can make your own donuts at home. It is easy, fun, and affordable. We have 3 Doughnut Recipe posts.

Recycled Plastic Bottle Crafts

A secret growing, living garden Playhouse

Weaving wall art for Kids

Recommended Reading:

Things to Make at Home for the home and garden

Six Fun Things to do with Fla-Vor-Ice Pops: Recipes for a Cool Kids' Birthday Party

Fun Things to do with Frozen Pops and Shaved Ice for Kid's Party

Remember when you were a kid, and your mom sent you outside with a Fla-Vor-Ice Pop?  To cool down in the hot summer, we'd eat our pops and then run through the sprinkler. The best thing about Fla-Vor-Ice is they are "mom approved".  Did you know they are gluten free, low in calories, and sugar?  Each standard pop has just 5 grams of sugar.  Like Fla-Vor-Ice on Facebook for more information and tons of fun ideas. 

This post brought to you by Jel Sert.  All opinions are 100% mine.

Kids like Fla-Vor-Ice Pops, because they are a fun and refreshing treat with great tasting flavors.  They come in original fruit flavors, Tropical flavors, and even a sugar-free variety. There is a Fla-Vor-Ice Pop for everyone.  During summer camp, we always have a box of freezer pops in the ice chest.  Since  ice-pops are portable fun for everyone, you never know when one might come in handy for one of these fun things to do with Fla-Vor-Ice Pops.



1.  Make a homemade, rainbow slushy for your next summer party. 

Summer Party Recipe Ice Pop  Rainbow Slushy.

2.  Keep frozen Fla-Vor-Ice pops in an ice chest during outdoor play dates or summer vacations, and use them as a quickie first-aid ice-pack for head bumps and boo-boos. They also help with hydration.

3.  For a fun, outdoor game use ice-pops and party cups.  Line the children up, so each one stands two feet in front of a party cup, cut-off the end of their ice-pop, and count to three.  On three, everyone tries to squeeze their frozen ice into the cup without missing.  The winner is the one who flings the most frozen Fla-Vor-Ice into their cup.    

4.  Squeeze your frozen Fla-Vor-Ice into plastic Easter Eggs and then refreeze them to make a fun Easter Egg shape ice-pop treat like these from Play Eat Grow blog.

Picture from Play Eat Grow blog.  Hop over for more great ideas.

5.  Use Fla-Vor-Ice freezer pops in a homeschool science lesson about the changing states of matter.  Time the ice-pop to see how fast it freezes.  Compare it's freezing time with that of other liquids like milk, water, or yogurt.  Let it melt in a bowl on the counter, leave it out, and then track how many days it takes to evaporate.  Does it completely evaporate?

6. Before your freeze your pops, pour the liquid into fun ice cube molds, and use them to flavor your favorite clear soda.  Yum!

It's your turn, what will you do with your Fla-Vor-Ice pop? Hop over and share your ideas on Fla-Vor-Ice on Facebook! 

Recommended Reading:

55 Recipes for Ice Pops and Shave Ice
     

How to make homemade Play Dough Recipe Ideas (Edible) and Pistachio Experiment

Ever wonder how to make play dough at home? 

We love to play with squishy dough. It is great for sensory play, especially when it has a scent. This recipe for how to make homemade play dough (Play-doh) is scented and edible, but not very tasty. Enjoy?

Scented Play Dough for a true Sensory experience.

Melted Crayons in Chocolate and Soap Molds

How to make Fun Crayon Shapes in Molds

Crayon fun for Preschoolers. Have your crayons and make them too using cookie, cake, or soap molds! What could be more fun than coloring with a dinosaur? Coloring with a dinosaur crayon. Enjoy!

Use a muffin tin and mix up melted crayon pieces
 for fun chunky crayons.

How to make play dough at home and 12 Fun Things to do with Play Dough

Looking for fun things to Make at Home?

Maybe you need an easy recipe for how to make dough or you're wondering how do I make play dough at home? How to make clay dough for older kids Here are fun clay and dough recipes to make at home with kids of all ages.

How to make play dough recipe:                                                         
2 c. corn starch, 1 c. salt, 1 1/2 c. boiling water, 2 tbs. cream of tartar, 2 tbs  oil (vegetable oil to keep it edible or baby oil to make it fun and a pleasant scent) Mix all ingredients together, then add a couple drops of your favorite food coloring. You can also separate into individual baggies, add a different drop of food color to each bag, and knead to mix. Let the kids do this for extra sensory play! You can make it without cream of tar tar too; the oil will fill the void it just might not stay fresh as long :)

 Sensory Guest Post from Krissy Sherman Bonning, Mama of 3, and Blogger  at B.Inspired, Mama!  (Connecting moms with kid-friendly arts & crafts, easy recipes, and preschool learning fun.) Hop over to Krissy's blog and check out all of the cool  fun from a Mommy with a Master's degree in Art Education.

I found an exciting feature on her blog, she accepts Submissions from other bloggers! Get your fun ideas posted and earn yourself some much deserved recognition.

Fun things to do with Playdough at home.

My kids’ go-to sensory activity is definitely play dough.  The ways you can play with it are endless.  And adding unusual objects and art supplies to it make it even more fun.  Here are some of our favorites:

1. Stencils – Use them to place on the play dough and trace around, press into the play dough to make impressions, and for imaginative play, too. 
2. Recycled Bottles – Next time you drink something out of a plastic bottle, check out the bottom.  It will probably make a really cool flower-like impression in play dough.  (from B-Inspired Mama)
3. Cardboard Boxes – Play dough details can turn boxes into buildings and even an entire city.  (from Inspiration Surrounds, Creativity Abounds)
4. Muffin Cups – Silicone muffin cups are perfect for making pretend cupcakes and muffins for an impromptu Birthday party or picnic.  (from B-Inspired Mama)
5. Fake Flowers – Plant them in play dough to make a beautiful flower garden for imaginative gardening fun. (from The Imagination Tree)
6. Animals – Green play dough makes the perfect jungle for little animal friends. (from Picklebums)
7. Googly Eyes – Bright your play dough to life and make silly monsters with lots of googly eyes. (from Pink and Green Mama)
8. Candy Molds – Use chocolate play dough to make pretend candies and fun shapes with candy molds.  (from Learning 4 Kids)
9. Laminated Play Dough Mats – Laminate images and learning worksheets for kids to add play dough details, letters, and snakes to.  (from Planet of the Apels)
10. Alphabet Cookie Cutters – Make play dough fun a learning opportunity by adding letter cookie cutters.  (from No Time for Flash Cards)
11. Glitter – Add lots of glitter to turn play dough into a glistening glob for galaxy fun.  (from Poppytalk)
12. Trucks & Cars – Play dough makes fun hills for driving over and tires on toy vehicles make awesome impressions.  (from B-Inspired Mama)

Do your kids like playing with play dough? Have you ever used anything unusual to make it more fun?

Recommended Reading:

Fun-tastic Clay Critters to Make

Modeling Clay Animals

Sensory Play Dough Recipe