Create a pretend restaurant
Pull up some outdoor chairs and travel table and let children serve you in a pretend restaurant. Painting stones and pebbles to look like different foods look much more appetising than a mud pie. Children can work with you to create menus and pretend to be head chef.
Learning words
You can use your mud kitchen to teach vocabulary. Create word blocks with things like ‘whisk’, ‘sizzle’, ‘bubble’, ‘pour’ and ‘stir’ and ask children to act out the meaning in your kitchen.
Measuring and counting
Teach children to measure and count with the ingredients used in your mud kitchen. You couldn’t possibly have too much grass in your pebble stew or it would spoil the flavour!
Painting with mud
Once you’ve cooked up the perfect batch of mud in your kitchen, why not use it to create art? Use scrap paper or an old white board as a canvas and get children’s creative ideas flowing.