Click here to read Outdoor Play Cooking: Make a Nature & Mud Pizza on Hands On As We Grow®
Kids love pizza, and kids love mud. What could be a better activity for them, therefore, than a gooey gooey nature and mud pizza play cooking?
Besides being fun, playing with mud has so many developmental benefits.
And it’s free!
I started this play cooking activity with my three year-old and soon enough my older two kids wanted to join in, as well.
There was also discussion of making mud cakes and pies!
Play Cooking Nature & Mud Pizza
To make your own nature and mud pizzas, you will need:
- bits of interesting nature (leaves, sticks, flowers, etc.)
- a bucket of mud
- plates or frisbee
- utensils
Gather Play Cooking Ingredients
First, walk around and collect interesting pieces of nature.
We found weeds, sticks, bits of bark, dying flowers, acorns, pinecones, all kinds of stuff that made delicious looking pizza toppings.
Next, get your mud.
If you don’t have any because, like here, it is a million degrees out and hasn’t rained in weeks, make your own by mixing some dirt with water.
Gradually add water, mixing until it is the perfect gooey saucy consistency.
For the crust, grab some plates.
Great-Grandma’s heirloom bone china is probably not ideal; choose something non-precious in case your kids don’t want to discard their pizzas and they bake out on the deck for the next 12 days.
A frisbee would work great for this also.
Create Play Cooking Pizza with Mud & Nature!
Pass a spoon to your kid and let them smear the mud sauce all over a plate crust.
For little ones help them through this creative cooking process by guiding each step of the play time with ideas.
Next step, toppings!
Grass is perfect for cheese! (Don’t tell my husband that we yanked up a bunch of it. He gets anxious about his lawn.)
Finally, let their imaginations run wild as play with cooking ideas.
Where will they bake it?
Will the treehouse be transformed into a pizza shop?
What else will the pizza shop sell?
Underneath the trampoline became the official mud pizza kitchen.
Every good restaurant really should have a trampoline.
Check out this fun mud painting idea!
I wasn’t sure how long this play cooking activity would last.
But all three of the kids spent at least an hour collecting toppings, making mud, and assembling their perfect pizza and cake creations.
This means that I would have had enough time to eat some real cake in peace and quiet, if only someone had the forethought to make some for me.
What muddy play have your kids been up to?
0 Commentaires