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| Science Laboratory at Lobethal Kindergarten in Australia |
I have many fond memories of spending endless happy hours in South Africa playing in the bottom of the garden behind the shed, making and creating an assortment of mud concoctions; mud pies of different shapes and sizes, cupcakes carefully decorated with flowers, cups of murky tea we invited adults to share. My own children did the same, mud pies and later many hours making midgie stew and slushy snow mixtures in Scotland. In Australia children take great delight in making Wombat Stew!
Children the world over have for generations had this urge or drive to experiment with mixtures. When you see children freely experimenting with a range of materials, you will see contented, deeply engaged play as these children at Stokes Valley Kindergarten demonstrate. Through this play children explore many complex scientific concepts, they develop frameworks of understanding on how the world works and then test and repeat them. In reality such play spaces are outdoor science laboratories.
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| Mud exploration at Boldon Outdoor Nursery, England |
Sadly, many children today no longer have opportunities to play, explore and experiment freely. Lives are overscheduled and rushed, adult perceptions are that nature is dirty, that children should focus on academic learning.
Children are being deprived of foundational experiences to develop core understanding on important concepts such as solutions, mixtures, flow, capacity, volume, weight, consistency, texture, measure, properties of materials, and so much more.
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| Lobethal Kindergarten, Australia |
Many early childhood settings and primary schools now recognise that children need time and opportunity to explore and experiment with a variety of materials in an experiential, hands on manner. Providing mud kitchens or science laboratories has become popular and through intentional provisions provided, the learning opportunities are enhanced.
Creating a high quality mud kitchen/science laboratory
- · The basics; soil and water.
- · A range of natural loose parts; flowers, sticks, seeds, leaves, straw, herbs etc
- · A space; mud kitchens now come in a range of structures ranging from small basic kitchen, to slightly larger ones, kitchen with a water pump, a full kitchen set, a cable reel kitchenand even a country kitchen!
- · Storage; Some kitchens come with hooks and spaces to store and sort, otherwise provide a simple bookshelf or rustic shelving
- · Containers; The larger the range in terms of materials and size the bigger the learning opportunities. Large metal bowls, large black plastic cauldron, pots and pans, metal buckets, baskets, smaller transparent containers, wooden bowls, plastic opaque kettles, ceramic kettles, metal kettles, metal jug, metal pouring pots, plastic and metal collanders, bamboo containers, metal, wooden, plastic and ceramic plates and cooking and baking sets, even copper or silver goblets for special occasions.
- · Measuring tools; measuring jugs that are transparent, translucent and opaque, kitchen scales, measuring sets.
- · Funnels; transparent funnelsand opaque funnels
- · Utensils; wooden spoons, wooden kitchen utensils, assorted metal utensils
- · Crushing; stone and a flat surface, wooden pestle and mortar, stone or ‘marble’ pestle and mortar.
- · Recipes; create own recipes, use waterproof mud pie recipe cards, or use a recipe board to share recipes
