Learning in the Mud Kitchen

Are you a homeschool parent or just love doing educational activities at home? Perhaps you are a Waldorf or Reggio Emilia inspired school teacher. If so you need to try these mud-kitchen learning activities!

1. Mud Kitchen Pie Bakery: All you need for this activity are some old cake pans, dirt, water, and whatever you’d like to use to decorate your pies! Leaves, flowers, pinecones, sticks, rocks, and grass are all favorites at our house! This activity promotes creativity, fine motor skills, and imaginative play.
2. Mud Buoyancy Experiment: First, your little one mixes dirt and water to make mud. Next, have them collect a variety of objects to test their buoyance in the mud. This activity and other STEM activities like observing how mud reacts to various substances, or making volcanoes, enables children to explore scientific concepts like cause and effect while making observations.
3. Mud Kitchen Planting Garden: Create a garden area on the mud kitchen where your children can plant flowers, herbs, or vegetables in mud-filled containers. They can explore different textures, scents, and colors while learning about gardening, plant growth, and environmental awareness. This is a perfect Spring activity!
4. Mud Kitchen Math Games: Use mud as a hands-on tool for math activities such as measuring, counting, and sorting. Children can measure ingredients for mud pies, count the number of scoops or pours they make, or sort natural materials by size, shape, or color. We love counting the nature treasures we find, in a wooden twenty frame as well! Some wooden twenty frames even come with a tracing section. Dirt is even more fun to trace with than sand! These activities reinforce math concepts in a fun and engaging way!
5. Mud Sensory Bin (Themed): What does your child love at the moment? Dinosaurs? Rocks, Bugs? Set up a sensory bin filled with loose parts for them to explore. We love all of the sensory stones in Monarch’s shop! Encourage them to dig, scoop, and search, fostering sensory exploration and tactile experiences. The filler possibilities are endless. You can use dirt, bird seed, or our favorite, bubbly play powder from Bubbling Botanicals!

For more mud kitchen activities be sure to follow us on Instagram, @monarchstudioboston!

Copy and photos by Mama Life Today (@_mamalifetoday_)

What sets our Mud Kitchens apart

When we started selling mud kitchens, we were just about the only ones, but that has changed. Now a quick google search brings up a lot of options that range from $100 to over $1,000, as well as tons of DIY ideas. All of these are great options, it just depends on what’s right for your family. Here is some info on what sets us apart to help you decide if our Mud Kitchen is what’s right for your family.

Our Kitchens are:

• Built to last. Our high quality kitchen’s will last through your children’s childhood, even if they are left outdoors, unstained.

• Built by highly skilled Amish woodworkers, 100% by hand, in the USA.

• Made of high quality, all natural wood. We don’t use old pallets or pressure treated wood because of the toxic chemicals in these products.

• Well sanded, by hand, to protect your child’s hands.

• Very strong. We use pocket screws and “L” shaped legs for extra stability.

• Aesthetically pleasing. There are no visible screws and our design in sleek and simple.

• Free of screws in the tabletop. They don’t look good, in our opinion, and we don’t want water seeping in through the screw holes.

• Easy and fast to put together, taking about 10-20 minutes and only requiring a screw driver or screw gun.

• Plastic free

• Customizable. Add running water with a water faucet that attaches to a hose, burners, or an oven door.

• Free to ship, for you. The reality is that someone has to pay for shipping, and we do that. It costs about $60 for us to ship a Mud Kitchen.

• Designed to perfection. We spent years designing and redesigning our kitchen until it was just right. We have a simple design to make it easy to assemble and easy on the eye. Our lower shelf is raised off the ground so your children’s feet don’t bump it during play, the solid back wall provides a place to lean learning materials against and to prevent items from falling backwards off the tabletop, there 2 double hooks for hanging utensils, pots ‘n pans, signs, or decorations, a spice rack for storing items, a large lower shelf for storing bins of accessories, and you can add running water to our kitchens.

• Large enough to play at but small enough to fit in just about any indoor or outdoor space. They are light enough to be carried by one adult.

• Designed to have the smallest footprint we can have when it comes to shipping. The Kitchens nest inside themselves in the box for the most ecological and cost effective shipping and very limited packaging materal. This also makes it easy for you take on a vacation or store if you need to put it away.

• Come with excellent customer service. If anything should go wrong with your kitchen, or you have any questions, you can call, email, or text me directly, the owner of the company, and I will help you.

When you buy from us, you are buying a high quality product that will provide years worth of beneficial sensory play, you’re buying yourself time, you’re buying a hassle free, aesthetically pleasing item for your home and yard, and you’re supporting a small woman owned business and a highly skilled Amish wood shop, all located in the USA.

Seed Market Mud Kitchen photo credit to April Maura