Pigs and Mud: Getting ready for International Mud Day

Have you heard of International Mud Day?  It's June 29th, but we're going to celebrate at school all week long, culminating in muddy play on Friday, June 27th.

Today we are thinking about pigs and mud, since they go together so very well.  I made a Venn Diagram sorting activity for the kiddos, which we all did after reading Ten Dirty Pigs by Carol Roth.  Here are several other good, muddy, piggy books:

We have a friend with a birthday today, and another child's birthday was yesterday, so some of the kiddos helped to make cupcakes....

 ...and everyone else helped to make "mud dough". 

 This is marvelous dough!  I found the recipe on www.icanteachmychild.com.  The dough is soft and malleable, and made a huge batch - easily enough for a dozen kiddos to play at the same time.  We played with pigs and fences, with a few other farm animals thrown in for good measure.

 Next we added "cooking" props, so the children could continue making birthday cakes, brownies, and chocolate milk shakes.

Today started out very stormy, but late in the morning the rain stopped, leaving us puddles to play in!

 I know it isn't quite mud, but we did get muddy and dirty.  I think our puddle stomping is at least within the spirit of International Mud Day!

While the youngest kiddos were resting this afternoon, I worked with some of the kiddos on sounding out CVC words with a game I created for them this weekend.  We played two rounds of Mud Puddle Stomp!, and I modelled how to sound out when it was my turn.  By the time the game ended, the kiddos were sounding out these simple words too.  This game is also available at http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Paulas-Preschool-And-Kindergarten.

After snack (those yummy birthday cakes the children made this morning) we headed outside for one more dirty activity.  I put some soil and trucks in one of our play tables, so we could have dirty truck play.  No water in there yet - we'll save the real muddiness for Friday, but we had plenty of fun with the dirt.

What are you doing for International Mud Day?  I hope you can find a way to join in the fun, and get messy!  Come back every day this week to see how we keep the mud theme going!