International Mud Day 2014!

It's finally here!  We've been talking about this day all month, and prepping for it all week.  International Mud Day is one of our favorite days at school!  International Mud Day (read about it at this link http://www.worldforumfoundation.org/working-groups/nature/international-mud-day/) is actually June 29th each year, but as it falls on a weekend this year, we celebrated on Friday, June 27th.

In the morning we did two cooking activities: the children rolled little smokies in crescent dough to create "pigs in a blanket" for lunch...

 ...and made chocolate pudding, a key ingredient in "muds and dirt" for snack.

 At snack time everyone had a turn beating chocolate cookies into crumbs, which we used to top our pudding.

 Muds and Dirt anyone?  Oh yes!

For this particularly busy day, one of my "graduates" came back to play reminisce help me.  She read stories, helped with crafts, played puzzles, and was a lot of help.  It was really fun to watch her face when we did activities she remembered!

The grand finale of our week, of course, was playing in the mud.  I offered 3 levels of muddy commitment, so everyone could choose where they were most comfortable.  There was the table with dry dirt and plastic trucks and scoops, for the kiddos who really didn't want to get muddy, or wanted a break from the mud.

There was a "mud pie" station, with mud, water, pie pans, cups, scoops... a mid level muddy choice.  Almost all the kiddos chose to play at this station at least part of the time.

Finally, for the adventurous, we had a plastic play pool full of mud, to wallow in!  The kiddos started off cautiously, mostly walking in the mud, or splashing their legs a little...

 

... but once a few of them braved the wallow, others joined on in!

Here we are, enjoying International Mud Day!

So surely some of you are wondering whether the teacher got muddy, or just took photos?  Are you kidding?!  This is a lot of fun!  About half way through the mud play I handed my camera to a parent, and joined on in.  I don't know that I was the muddiest, but it was close! 

When we had had enough, and the parents were ready to take their kiddos home, we scooped up the mud, and took it to the vegetable garden.

Yes, we had to rinse off... a lot... in the sprinkler.  No, none of the parents got muddy, and yes, they surely had to put down towels to keep their cars clean, and bathe some dirty dirty kiddos once they got home.  Still,  look at these smiles.

This is an experience I hope the children never, ever forget, and make sure they pass on to their own children.  Happy International Mud day!

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!

In the vegetable garden this week...

 I recently discovered an awesome gardening book (fiction) for children, and had to get a copy for our class.  Two Old Potatoes and Me was written by John Coy (see it on his website here) and illustrated by Carolyn Fisher, and it is perfect for our farm theme.

I found some old potatoes growing in my pantry this morning planned ahead and let some potatoes sprout in the pantry, so we could observe them, read the book, and plant our spuds like the characters in the book.  We compared a sweet potato, a russet, and some sprouting baby yukon golds.  The children noticed a lot of similarities and differences between the potatoes, as well as discovering the eyes, and of course the growing sprouts and roots.

When we went outside a little while later, we put a layer of potting soil in a large tub...

 ... and started our own potatoes growing.  We'll add layers of soil as they grow, to hill up around them, and hopefully in a few months we'll have potatoes to eat!

 We won't have to wait that long for our green beans - they have sprouted!  We had a hard, soaking rain earlier this week, and the following day the beans began peeking through the soil.  The children are fascinated by the seed coat falling off,  and tiny leaves growing.

 We're observing them every day, watching their progress. 

This week our pumpkins - the ones that have sprouted from our old jack-o-lanterns (read previous posts about that here), have started to bloom. 

Unlike most flowers, squash blossoms are either male or female.  This is a male blossom, it has a single stamen in the center, female squash blossoms have a ring of five stigma, and a baby fruit growing from the base.  Once you see them side by side, you'll have no trouble differentiating!  The male flowers always start first, and are prolific.  These are the ones we eat!  We're careful to leave the female flowers, so they can bear fruit for us.  Want to know more about eating squash blossoms?  Here is a link.

See how many I picked on just this one day?  We have about a dozen flowers each day right now, and they are best in the early morning.  My friends come running to get a taste of them!

I tear off the petals, and discard the stamen and stem areas.  Squash blossoms remind me a little of the flavor of cucumbers - very mild, but slightly sweet.  Yummy!

There's one more fun thing we've been watching in the veggie garden this week - lots of ladybugs!  One of my kiddos is very into ladybugs, and knows that they eat aphids - and the children wanted me to show them what aphids look like.  When they asked a month ago, I hadn't seen any, but this week I found them swarming on our old cabbage plants that have gone to seed - we ate those blossoms too by the way!  Here's what these aphids look like - tiny little gray-green bugs.

 Now I understand why there are also ladybug pupa on the cabbage plants, as well as adult ladybugs!  I'm hoping to find some larvae and maybe some eggs too, so I can show the children the whole life cycle!