Click here to read 10 Benefits of Mud Play & The Magic of Dirt on Hands On As We Grow®
What is your favorite childhood memory of playing in the mud? Victoria Hacket shows us the benefits of mud play, and how you can keep those memories alive for your kids, too!
Do you remember the squishy feeling of wet mud between your fingertips, making mud pies and spending hours covered head to toe in the dirt? These memories help inform how you teach and parent.
Dirt and mud play are often overlooked as essential teaching tools for young children. We need to spread the word that getting dirty and playing in mud has enormous benefits in all areas of child development!
Are you a parent or teacher that dislikes dirty, muddy kids?
Do you eliminate mud play in your outdoor space?
Maybe you know the benefits of mud play, yet steer children away from it because you don’t want kids coming inside dirty.
When you think of mud play, do you get stuck in dread thinking about all the extra cleanup there will be for you?
Let’s check out the magic of dirt!
Here are 10 benefits to let the kids play in the mud today!
1. A Benefit of Mud Play is that it Encourages Creativity (Increase Emotional Development)
Mud Art: This offers endless opportunities for creative expression. Think mud sculptures, mud pictures/designs, and mud body painting.
2. Mud Builds Problem Solving-Skills (Dirt Benefits Cognitive Development)
Cooperative Play: Think of all the negotiating, communicating and sharing that goes on in a kitchen. Children can also work alone in the Mud Kitchen and problem solve.
3. Playing in the Mud Uses Fine and Gross Motor Skills (Helps with Physical Development)
Kitchen Jobs: Think of the variety of tasks the Mud Kitchen offers children. Weighing, measuring and adding small loose parts to a Mud Pie with utensils all require fine motor skills.
Mixing mud flour in a large saucepan, transporting heavy buckets and reaching up high for a hanging pot all require gross motor skills.
4. Practice Listening and Taking Turns with Messy Play (i.e. Mud Benefits Social Development)
Role Play: Think how children act out whatever they are learning. Mud Play is a sensory experience. Therefore, provides an abundance of things for children to talk about. The Mud Kitchen offers a platform for them to practice many of these life skills.
5. Plays a Role in Our Mood. Mud Makes us Happier! (Improves Emotional Development)
Scientific Studies: Think how happy children are after playing in the Dirt. The magic is in the Dirt.
Recent scientific studies have connected the happy, relaxed and calm moods after Mud Play to the dirt that contains microscopic bacteria called Mycobacterium Vaccae. This bacteria increases the serotonin in our brains.
Now think about children who are not playing in the Mud? Do you see a difference?
6. Inspires caring for the environment (Benefits Social Development)
Connection to Nature: Think how vital it is in today’s world to get children outdoors to reconnect with nature. With nature-deficit disorder on the rise, Mud play creates memories and a relationship with our Earth.
Planting a seed, nurturing a plant and harvesting a garden will, in turn, inspire a connection to the care of our environment in the future. I call this, “Planting seeds of inspiration.”
7. Mud Play Invites Inclusive Playful Learning Opportunities (Benefits Social, Emotional, Cognitive, Physical Development)
Open-ended Play: Think about adding Mud Kitchen Challenges (like in the photo above). These are great ways to add additional learning in an open-ended play environment.
8. Dirt Builds Stronger Immune Systems (Helps with Physical Development)
Scientific Studies: Think about the kids who get really dirty and how often they get sick. Now think about the kids who are constantly applying antibacterial potions and never going outside.
You will find it is the dirty kids who are healthier. Scientific studies show the same microscopic bacteria in the dirt that can make you happier have also proven beneficial to the immune system.
9. Invite a Total Sensory Experience with Mud (Increases Physical Development, Social & Cognitive)
Sensory Play: Think of soaking your hands in a bucket of cold, mushy mud. Ahhhhh….. What is happening to you? Are you loving it? Or, is this a difficult thing to do?
Research shows that sensory play builds nerve connections in the brain’s pathways, which lead to the child’s ability to complete more complex learning tasks.
10. Mud Play Benefits the Heart and Skin (Improves Physical Development)
Therapeutic: Adults pay good money for mud bath spas — a secret that children have known all along. Mud relaxes and soothes! This is all good for us!
Keep the mess contained in a sensory bin! Here’s a free week of sensory bins to download.
Have you ever thought about the benefits of mud play and adding it to your everyday outdoor day?
Share in the comments below!
About Victoria Hackett: My mission at Outdoor-Classrooms.com is for every child in every school to have access to an Outdoor Classroom. Therefore, I inspire educators to teach outdoors and I lead an online virtual community of Natural Teachers all over the world to create their own Outdoor Classroom story.
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