4 Awesome Free Printable Mud Kitchen Recipes Your Kid Can Use Outside With Their Mud Kitchen - This Tiny Blue House (2024)

Boost the fun with your outdoor mud kitchen with these free printable mud kitchen recipes. From dirt pies to sand Muffins these recipes encourage screen free outdoor sensory play.

Don’t have a mud kitchen for the kids yet? Check out these awesome diy mud kitchen ideas: 19 seriously awesome diy backyard mud kitchens you can easily make yourself.

4 Awesome Free Printable Mud Kitchen Recipes Your Kid Can Use Outside With Their Mud Kitchen - This Tiny Blue House (1)

Free Printable Mud Kitchen Recipes

Do you own a mud kitchen?

If you don’t, then you’ve gotta check out this post we wrote about making your own diy backyard mud kitchen.

If you do, great! You’re going to love these totally free printable mud kitchen recipes that we created to boost the fun and encourage sensory outdoor play for kids.

We love mud kitchens around here. They’re such a great tool for letting kids explore their environment while engaging in imaginative pretend play.

As a result, we wanted to create a fun free printable collection of mud kitchen recipes that you can print to encourage the kids to add an extra little challenge and layer of creativity to their mud kitchen play activities.

Are you in a rush? Click here to save these mud kitchen recipes to Pinterest so you can easily find them again.

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How These Mud Kitchen Recipes Work

4 Awesome Free Printable Mud Kitchen Recipes Your Kid Can Use Outside With Their Mud Kitchen - This Tiny Blue House (2)

Our free printable mud kitchen recipes were created to add a little structure (and learning) to mud kitchen play.

We know that by itself, mud kitchen play encourages sensory and motor skill development in addition to stimulating a bunch of other life skills like co-operation and problem solving.

So, we wanted to take the benefits of mud kitchen play a step further by creating free printable mud kitchen recipes that promote math, literacy and problem solving.

The idea behind these mud kitchen recipes is simple.

Print out the free mud kitchen recipes and challenge your child to first practice reading the recipe card. From there, children need to create a plan and strategy to find the correct number of each ingredient. Finally, back at their mud kitchen play area kids need to assemble and create their culinary masterpiece by putting all the ingredients together. Rinse and repeat until children have created all 5 mud kitchen recipes successfully.

Pretty cool hunh? We just love the extra layer of creativity and possibilities for imaginative play these mud kitchen recipes bring to the table.

Gotta go? Click here to save these mud kitchen recipes to Pinterest so you can easily find them again.

Mud Kitchen Recipes

Our mud kitchen recipes include 4 unique recipe cards including: a mud pie recipe, a dirt pie recipe, a sand muffin recipe and a rock cake recipe.

Each mud kitchen recipe card lists the name of the recipe and includes a detailed list of natural ingredients that your child should be able to find in their outdoor environment.

The mud kitchen recipe cards contains visual representations of each ingredient to help children who are not yet reading understand which items they are looking for and to start making strides with word recognition.

Children can check off each ingredient as they find and collect it. Using a large plastic sand bucket is a great way to make the foraging part of this activity easier for kids.

Back at their mud kitchens you can let their imaginations run wild as they prepare each recipe. They can opt to chop, tear or mash ingredients together.

There is no right or wrong way to prepare these mud pie recipe so let children explore the ingredients with their senses and make prep choices on the fly.

Are you in a rush? Click here to save these mud kitchen recipes to Pinterest so you can easily find them again.

Here are the ingredient details of each mud kitchen recipe card:

#1 Mud Pie Recipe

4 Awesome Free Printable Mud Kitchen Recipes Your Kid Can Use Outside With Their Mud Kitchen - This Tiny Blue House (3)

The mud pie recipe requires that children forage for the following ingredients:

  • 4 flowers of any type
  • 3 rocks
  • 10 blades of grass
  • 1 cup of dirt

#2 Dirt Pie Recipe

4 Awesome Free Printable Mud Kitchen Recipes Your Kid Can Use Outside With Their Mud Kitchen - This Tiny Blue House (4)

The dirt pie recipe requires that children forage for the following ingredients:

  • 2 twigs
  • 3 pine cones
  • 2 cups of gravel
  • 1 dandelion (if no dandelions are available swap for another ingredient)

#3 Sand Muffin Recipe

4 Awesome Free Printable Mud Kitchen Recipes Your Kid Can Use Outside With Their Mud Kitchen - This Tiny Blue House (5)

This sand muffin recipe requires that children forage for the following ingredients:

  • 3 flowers of any type
  • 5 leaves of any type
  • 1 scoop/cup of sand
  • 2 rocks

#4 Rock Cake Recipe

4 Awesome Free Printable Mud Kitchen Recipes Your Kid Can Use Outside With Their Mud Kitchen - This Tiny Blue House (6)

This rock cake recipe requires that children forage for the following ingredients:

  • 6 rocks
  • 5 flowers of any type
  • 2 scoops/cups of dirt
  • 3 leaves of any type

Are you in a rush? Click here to save these mud kitchen recipes to Pinterest so you can easily find them again.

Tips For Making The Most Of These Mud Kitchen Recipes

Laminate Your Cards

Mud kitchen play can get really messy which is why we love it so much. There’s something incredibly satisfying about playing with dirt. We also know that letting kids play in dirt helps boost their immune system, connect with nature and lessen their anxiety.

But, all that playing with dirt means that hands, clothes and surfaces get really really dirty.

So, we highly suggest laminating your recipe cards so they can withstand the mess and be reused over and over again.

Reusable mud kitchen recipes are a great way to reduce paper consumption and have recipes ready and waiting for times the kids are itching to play with their mud kitchens.

We highly recommend this budget friendly Scotch thermal laminator that is available on Amazon.

Turn Foraging Into A Scavenger Hunt

What kid doesn’t LOVE a good scavenger hunt!?

Turning the foraging part of this mud kitchen recipe activity into an all out scavenger hunt is a great way to boost the fun and excitement even more.

Scavenger hunts are a great way to encourage kids to make discoveries of their own. So, coupling sensory play from mud kitchen play with a scavenger hunt encourages kids to make connections and work on strategy building.

Gotta go? Click here to save these mud kitchen recipes to Pinterest so you can easily find them again.

Make It A Competition

Turn these mud kitchen recipes and mud kitchen play into a Top Chef competition by encouraging siblings or groups of friends to have a “cook off”.

Provide each child with their own recipe card and have them set out to first find their ingredients and then whip up a culinary masterpiece for mom and dad to judge.

Add a Timer

Kids love to race against the clock. Add a timer to your mud kitchen recipe play to get kids moving to find and forage their ingredients in a set amount of time.

Save these free printables for later. Click here to save these mud kitchen recipes to Pinterest so you can easily find them again.

Recommended Supplies

4 Awesome Free Printable Mud Kitchen Recipes Your Kid Can Use Outside With Their Mud Kitchen - This Tiny Blue House (7)

Here are the supplies we recommend for making the most out of these mud kitchen recipes.

Save these free printables for later. Click here to save these mud kitchen recipes to Pinterest so you can easily find them again.

Frequently Asked Questions

#1 Do I really need a mud kitchen? What can I use instead?

No you absolutely do not need a physical mud kitchen to use these mud kitchen recipe cards (Although we highly recommend you invest in either DIYing a mud kitchen or buying one because they are SO cool and SO much fun for kids).

If you don’t have a mud kitchen available to you simply round up some basic kitchen gear like pots, pans, bowls and mixing spoons and provide kids with a flat surface where they can get busy chopping, prepping and cooking up their recipes.

#2 How old do children need to be to use these mud kitchen recipes?

One of the great things about mud kitchen play is how versatile and adaptable it is. Mud kitchen play can be encouraged in kids as young as 2 and can be a fun activity for kids as old as 10 or even 12.

Scale the difficulty of mud kitchen play by adding more complex ingredients and measurements to challenge older kids to think outside the box.

Mud kitchen play is a great way to teach older children real world math concepts including the metric system/imperial system of measurement and mental math.

#3 Some of the ingredients are not available to me, what do I do?

It’s really no big deal if you can’t find some of the ingredients in these mud kitchen recipe cards. If the flowers or leaves mentioned in these mud kitchen recipe cards are unavailable to you, simply swap out the ingredient with something local your child can easily find in their environment.

#4 My child can’t read yet, is that a problem?

Not at all. These mud kitchen recipes were created with the youngest learners in mind. As a result, there’s a visual representation of each ingredient to help non readers visually understand and process what they are looking for.

#5 I don’t have a back yard. Where can I take my kids to complete this activity?

If you don’t have a back yard you can easily print off these mud kitchen recipes and head to a local park or green space. Pack some very basic kitchen items to give kids the opportunity to benefit from the sensory play component of mud kitchen play.

Or, take a walk in your neighborhood to collect the required ingredients to create these mud kitchen recipes. Then, work on putting the recipes together at home. Be warned though, mud kitchen play can get MESSY.

Gotta go? Click here to save these mud kitchen recipes to Pinterest so you can easily find them again.

#6 What other ways can I use these mud kitchen recipes?

These mud kitchen recipes can be used in a variety of different ways.

In the classroom: are you a kindergarten or pre-k teacher and looking for a creative and fun sensory activity for your students? Split students into pairs and provide them with a mud kitchen recipe to complete as a team. This works on problem solving skills, team work, cooperation all while engaging their senses.

As a birthday party game: Are you hosting an outdoor birthday party for your child? Consider using these mud kitchen recipes as a fun interactive birthday party game that’ll get kids moving and having a good time. You can group children together and have them take part in a scavenger hunt to first find the required ingredients and then work together to create culinary masterpieces.

At any event your hosting at home: Hosting friends or family for dinner? Use these mud kitchen recipes to get the kids outside and off their screens. Print a bunch of copies and let kids use their imagination and senses to collect and create their mud kitchen recipes.

#7 Do I have to print the mud kitchen recipes in color?

You don’t have to! But, mud kitchen recipes that are printed in vibrant color add to the sensory component of the learning experience. We highly recommend this Brother Compact Color Digital Printed that is available via Amazon.

#8 I’m a teacher, can I use this in my classroom?

Yes! Our printable mud kitchen recipes are totally free for personal and classroom use. Having said that, our printable mud kitchen recipes cannot be modified, altered or sold.

#9 My Child Does Not Like To Get Dirty, What Can I do?

If your child dislikes playing with dirt and prefers not to get dirty you can easily modify this activity. Encourage your child to forage for items they are comfortable touching to make the activity less messy. Otherwise you can opt to incorporate some plastic food items to your mud kitchen recipe play session.

Save these free printables for later. Click here to save these mud kitchen recipes to Pinterest so you can easily find them again.

Download & Print Instructions

Downloading and printing these 4 free mud kitchen recipes is easy. Click on the links below to download your free recipes in pdf.

Once you’ve downloaded each individual recipe card to your computer you can print.

  1. Dirt Pie Recipe: Click here to download this mud kitchen recipe in pdf format
  2. Mud Pie Recipe : Click here to download this mud kitchen recipe in pdf format
  3. Rock Cake Recipe: Click here to download this mud kitchen recipe in pdf format
  4. Sand Muffin Recipe: Click here to download this mud kitchen recipe in pdf format

Save these free printables for later. Click here to save these mud kitchen recipes to Pinterest so you can easily find them again.

Looking for more neat screen free ideas for kids? Check out these:

We absolutely love creative screen free activities for kids.

So, we’re constantly working on building and improving our collection of diy screen free activities for children.

Here are some fun screen free activities for kids we hand picked for you to check out:

  • Build counting, coloring and sorting skills with our massive collection of free I Spy Printable worksheets for kids.
  • Interested in some free coloring pages? Click here to check out our whole collection of free coloring pages for kids.
  • Want the kids to play outside more? Here are more than 80 outrageously clever ways to transform your backyard into a mega fun play area
  • Got a swing set the kids don’t use anymore? Transform it into a really fun play area with these super cool backyard swing ideas.
  • Interested in adding some cool new activities to your rainy day activity arsenal? Here are 75+ super fun rainy day activities every parent need to know about.
  • Do the kids love Play-Doh? Here’s the BEST DIY homemade Play-Doh recipe you’ll ever find.
  • Speaking of Play-Doh, check out these totally free printable Alphabet and number practice mats the kids can use to practice their numbers and letters.
  • Looking for clever ways to cool down in the summer? Here are 20 super fun DIY Outdoor water games you can make for the kids.

Are you interested in printing and using these mud kitchen recipes with the kids sometime soon? Then, click here to save these mud pie recipes to Pinterest so you can quickly find them.

4 Awesome Free Printable Mud Kitchen Recipes Your Kid Can Use Outside With Their Mud Kitchen - This Tiny Blue House (8)
4 Awesome Free Printable Mud Kitchen Recipes Your Kid Can Use Outside With Their Mud Kitchen - This Tiny Blue House (9)
4 Awesome Free Printable Mud Kitchen Recipes Your Kid Can Use Outside With Their Mud Kitchen - This Tiny Blue House (10)
4 Awesome Free Printable Mud Kitchen Recipes Your Kid Can Use Outside With Their Mud Kitchen - This Tiny Blue House (2024)

FAQs

What age should you buy a mud kitchen? ›

Ages 5-8 years (Primary School):

Even 9–11 years olds like to get stuck in! Showing Mud Kitchens are not age specific! They provide an outdoor environment that encourages Personal, Social, and Emotional development, creative play, and a fun arena for mathematical, scientific, and literacy-based learning through play.

Are mud kitchens good for children? ›

Mud kitchens work incredibly well as part of PSED for learners because they encourage role play, sharing and turn taking. The kitchen style environment promotes role play amongst children and it's not uncommon to see learners taking on the role of a chef in a restaurant kitchen or mum or dad cooking at home.

What is an outdoor mud kitchen? ›

Mud kitchens are outdoor play spaces for kids between the ages of 1 and 7. These setups are for self-directed play like sensory tables at preschools. Mud kitchens help build children's independence and academic skills, cultivate creativity, and could help boost immunity.

What are the disadvantages of a mud kitchen? ›

The mud kitchen can take up space that children usually use to play freely in. Pots and pans filled with mud can be heavy and children may injure themselves if they are dropped on hands and feet.

How tall should a kids mud kitchen be? ›

Use a tape measure to establish a suitable playing surface height for your child. just above their elbow is a good starting point - this means there's room to grow, although if they are taller (or a sibling is) they won't 'lose out' if they are a bit taller!

What soil is best for kids mud kitchen? ›

A useful approach for mud kitchens is to supply soil from purchased loam topsoil rather than from gardens or uncovered plant borders (all garden centres sell this; don't try compost as it does not behave sufficiently like soil for satisfactory mud play). Freshly excavated mole hills also supply lovely clean topsoil!

Can mud kitchens stay outside? ›

A mud kitchen includes elements of the much-loved domestic corner and cooking from indoor play, which are then hugely enriched through the special nature of being outside. Mud kitchens work well all year round, and need to be seen as a core element of continuous provision outside.

What is the best mud for a mud kitchen? ›

You can buy mud and sand from DIY or hardware stores; topsoil (or loam soil) is best. Compost works but you'll find it's a little clumpy and doesn't achieve a smooth 'muddy' consistency. Sharp or soft sand can be used for different effects.

How to weatherproof a mud kitchen? ›

Install screws into each hole and ensure they are tightly secured into place. Attach hinges on both sides so that your shelves can be opened and closed as needed. Finally, use paint or varnish to weatherproof and protect your mud kitchen from the elements outside.

Is a mud kitchen worth it? ›

Fine Motor Skills; Mud kitchens are great for improving fine motor skills in children; mixing and stirring, along with pouring water, plays a key part in this. Social Skills: Building with mud can teach children valuable social skills.

What age do children play with mud kitchens? ›

An outdoor play kitchen is a fantastic resource for toddlers and preschoolers, but even older kids can't resist the fun. Preschoolers and nursery-aged children, specifically those between 2-4 years old, benefit greatly from playing with mud kitchens.

What is another name for a mud kitchen? ›

Mud kitchens are often referred to as texture kitchens to encourage those of us who use them to think beyond just mud.

What to add to a mud kitchen? ›

You could add:
  1. some gardening tools or kitchen utensils.
  2. a different selection of natural materials.
  3. mud kitchen recipe cards.
  4. large and small tools.
  5. cake tins and moulds.
  6. herbs and spices.

What are the rules for a mud kitchen? ›

Like all interest areas, mud kitchens have some ground rules. In addition to the basics—share, be kind, take turns—a mud kitchen adds: “mud is not for throwing” and “do not eat mud.” The rules should be kept to a minimum and need to be explained before opening the kitchen.

What to put in a toy kitchen? ›

When your child is more experienced with sensory play and doesn't just throw materials all over the house, you can introduce sensory elements into the play kitchen. In the past we have used lentils, rainbow rice, mini pumpkins, dried flowers, loose herbal teas and nature treasures as an extra addition to the space.

What plants are good for a mud kitchen? ›

Herbs such as rosemary and thyme can be a great sensory addition to a mud kitchen, as well as dried flowers. Always put allergies into account. ⭐ Learning experience; Ask children to discuss the properties of the herbs and flowers.

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