Thursday, April 8, 2010

Mud in the Kitchen

Inspired by Valerie, at the Frugal Family Fun Blog, and the gooey, glooky, good time they had making mud pies, I picked up Mary Lyn Rays' Mud from the library.

"One night it happens. Maybe it begins in the warm of day, but it's always at night that it happens. Earth comes unfrozen. And then there is...mud...mucky, magnificent mud."

The brightly colored, simply worded picture book, about the joys of playing in the mud, at the beginning of spring, made us want to play in the mud, too.

The only problem is, our mud is still frozen, not completely, middle of winter, frozen, but not barefoot, squishing between the toes, thawed out, and ready to play in, either. And, the north wind did end up blowing in a snow squall, today. So, I had to come up with something we could do inside the house.


A quick search through the blogosphere, provided our solution - clean mud!

  • Unwind one roll of toilet paper.


  • Rip it into tiny shreds (a pretty good boredom buster on it's own).


  • Shred one bar of soap.


  • Mix the soap, with the toilet paper, some food coloring - for a brownish color, and enough hot water to dissolve the soap, but not so much as to make it soupy.


  • Enjoy!

The kids weren't too sure about our "mud" to begin with, but it didn't take long for them to discover its charm.


I won't kid you - it made a mess. But, the cleanup was surprisingly easy, and I was planning on mopping the kitchen floor today, anyway. Which I did, while the kids went outside to enjoy one more burst of winter.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

6 comments:

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

Wow, I can't believe your weather! I am glad that you had such a creative fun inside.

Ticia said...

I've seen that before and noted it for later. I'm sure we'll get to it sooner or later.

Valerie @ Inner Child Fun said...

Oh my goodness, what a fun day you had!! Love the clean mud idea, and we'll have to keep it in mind for when the weather is not so cooperative too. How fun!! Thank you so much for the link -- I really appreciate it! xoxo :-)

Desiree said...

That's great, I'll have to remember that one.

Anabelle said...

I read this book to my daughter this week. I happened to glance at the sleeve and read about the author, come to realize she lives in the next town over! (South Danbury NH, I live in Grafton)

No wonder we had all her books in our library haha

Fiona said...

Hi there great blog! We have made this 'clean mud' as we call it quite a few times. My two seem to enjoy the tearing tissue best though!
Do please check out my blog!