Mud Day 2012

My vacation has officially begun so for the next two weeks it will be very quiet around here – except for the sounds of power tools and the odd bit of ‘language’ that occurs during renovations.  However, I wanted to first share a few of the highlights of our celebration of International Mud Day.
Of course being the last day before the holidays also meant that 75% of the children were absent but that didn’t stop the rest of us from playing with mud. 

First we had a discussion about what ‘international’ means and then we started with dirt — feeling the texture and breaking up lumps;

Then we added the water and mixed;

It is during experiences like this that I miss having an area with lawn to run around on.  Mud and water makes the deck very slippery and we would loose all the mud in the gravel area.  We added a few toys to the mud bin;

And tried shaping and moulding the mud;

There were some cool hand prints;

The water table was originally going to be another mud station but with so few children we didn’t need the extra space so I just filled it with water which ultimately became more popular than the mud bin.  They love playing with water more than anything else.   The first bit of mud introduced to one side of the water table instantly turn the water black which prompted a half hour of “Come to the dark side” play.

In the end the dark side prevailed;

It was a fantastic way to spend our last day before vacation and we topped it off with a special snack – homemade frozen yogurt (plain yogurt + frozen fruit + blender);