Spring is inching closer, and along with the appealing warmer days and flower buds comes. . . mud. Being a self-declared “neat freak” it’s been difficult for me to learn to embrace my boys’ desire to stomp and romp in such muck. Yet, through their dirty explorations has come many great opportunities to grow their language repertoires.
5 ways to play & build language in the mud:
- Bring out trucks - make vehicle, construction, and destruction noises (i.e. beep, honk, bang-bang, boom); build roads and give directions to follow in order to get from one mound of mud to another
- Bring out shovels & pails - narrate your work of scooping, digging, dumping, filling, emptying; initiate taking turns to fill a pail (i.e. “First I scoop, now you scoop”)
- Bring out pots, pans, cupcake tins & kitchen utensils - pretend that you are working in a kitchen or eating at a restaurant and make mud soup, mud cookies, mud pies and mud muffins
- Paint with mud - find a flat surface on the driveway, patio, rock, or bring out a board or large storage tote lid; smear mud on the surface and then use your fingers and/or sticks to draw pictures in the muck; narrate your and your child’s actions, describe what you see, ask questions; draw scenes to create a story together
- Put on boots & stomp - sing, skip, jump/hop; play Simon-Says in the mud; use adjectives (i.e. fast, slow) and spatial concepts (i.e. over, across, around, in)
Follow it up with a book: Mud by Mary Lyn Ray, and Worm Weather by Jean Taft
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