Making Colorful Clean Mud

Have you ever played with Clean Mud? I've always wanted to make Clean Mud (can't believe I didn't do this until now!) and finally did with the neighborhood kids and my daughter. They all loved it.  It was such a fun process and great sensory experience.  It also contains simple materials I think you'll have right at home: Ivory Soap + Toilet Paper + Water.  I got the recipe here at earthkids.com.  Keep reading to find out the details of this super cool sensory play experience.

To create Clean Mud you'll need:

3 Bars of Ivory Soap 

1 to 2 rolls of toilet paper

Hot water (not  scalding)

Liquid Watercolors or Food Colors

large bowl or container

To make the Clean Mud, first you grate the Ivory Soap. They all wanted to help with this step. Then you can start tearing up the toilet paper.

We were kind of grating and putting the toilet paper in at the same time to keep everyone busy.  After adding the toilet paper and grated Ivory soap, we added the water little by little.  The instructions said it should feel like Whipped Topping. I thought it was much squishier and thicker than that.

 Next, start combining it all together.  Here is my daughter and her friend squishing it all together. They just loved this part.

They kept squishing it back and forth.  Lot of smiles and giggling!

Back and forth. So fun!

The cool thing about Clean Mud is that it is very moldable too.  Here is a "Clean Mud Mountain"!

Also, it is quite fun to poke with fingertips.  We didn't even add any tools or containers....they had so much fun just playing without other materials

 

They all suggested mixing color into it and I thought that was brilliant idea! I put liquid watercolor (you could use food color)  and Clean Mud in individual plastic bags so they could all mix their own color. This reminded me of our Paint Mixing In Bags.  Since the Clean Mud was in bags they could take it home to show their parents.....yay!

With the rest of the Clean Mud we added a bunch of colors.

This is my Heart Creation that I made. It kind of gave a rainbow effect! I liked molding the Mud into things because I always want to make everything into a sculpture.  Either way it was a successful sensory play experience and I sure hope you give it a try. Let me know if you try it.

More Clean Mud Inspiration:

Sparkle Soap Mud from The Imagination Tree

Clean Mud via the Microwave from Child Central Station

Clean Mud Experience for Young Children from
Let The Children Play

Clean Mud Sculptures from Craftberry Bush

Clean Mud is a fun (and messy) art project from
The Artful Parent

Colorful Mud Paintings for Our Mud Bakery

We created Colorful Mud Paintings for our New Mud Bakery and Cafe.  All Cafes need a little art on the wall or in the trees. (since we have no walls)  C thought it was a great idea....it didn't take much to convince this sometimes stubborn almost 6 year old to make some mud paintings again.  Keep reading to find out how we created our paintings.

For Colorful Mud Paintings you'll need:

Mud

Water

Food colors

brushes

paper, cardboard, or Scrap Matte Board

Containers

To create our mud paint (this is not an exact recipe) we put some mud, water, and food color in plastic cups and mixed it all up.

Then, we began painting....my daughter loved this. If I brought out regular paint she wouldn't have been as interested, but when you change things up a bit.....success!

Splatter Painting.

Cat Painting.

Colors.

Are whole array of Colorful Mud Paintings for our Mud Bakery.

I even made some mud paintings in my sketchbook for TInkerlab's DPS Challenge. Find out more about the challenge here.

Another sketchbook mud painting.

You can check out more Mud Painting here from last year.

Mud Bakery

We created a mud kitchen in our backyard with so much inspiration to make one...we just had to!  Check out the links below for our inspiration! We've always played in the mud, but never made an official Mud Kitchen. Just gather some old kitchen items and some mud and you have a mud kitchen.  I saw a toy kitchen in the trash...which would have been perfect to put in the backyard for a more official Mud Kitchen! Ours turned out pretty well though!  Take a look...

Creating soups and stews.

Mud cookies with sand sprinkles on a matte board cookie sheet.

A true Mud pie with leaf decorations.

Everything went into our mud oven on the deck.  Cooking in the sun were mud cake pops, chocolate mud muffins, sweet gum treats, sand sprinkled cookies, and the pie.  They took a day to cook in the sun/deck oven!

The next day the items in the oven were done! Mud cookies!

Chocolate Mud Muffins!

Mud Cake Pops!

C continues to make mud soups and stews....her favorite concoction! A Wizard Stew is what she said this was!

Hope you are inspired to create a Mud Kitchen! A Frugal way to have fun and inspire imagination!

Our Inspiration to create a Mud Kitchen:

Outdoor Concoctions Kitchen from The Imagination Tree


Thrifting for a Mud Pie Kitchen from TinkerLab


Mud Pie Kitchen Renovation with over 30 links from Child Central Station

Mud Painting for International Mud Day!!!

We decided to join in the fun and paint with Mud for International Mud Day! Never heard of the day until recently (I guess it is the first?)!  If you have ever played with mud or have an activity that goes along with it be sure to add your idea in the the linky after this post! If you have no idea of what to do... check out the ideas below or head over to Hands on : as we grow for a great collection of 30+ Dirty Kid Activities here!

First we collected some mud in a pail, added some water, mixed it around and there you have some MUD Paint! If you could find a mud puddle it would be the same thing!

Cassie grabbed a paint brush and the FUN began!

Starting to do some Splatter Mud Painting!

Finished Splatter Mud Painting! (Yuck!....but fun!)

Put your feet into the pail and it is a Great sensory Experience! This girl Loves getting her feet dirty, but not her hands!!!!!

Making Mud Foot Prints! 

Back to brush painting with the Mud! This Girl had a Great Time in the Mud!

We were almost up to our elbows in MUD!!!

Mud paintings Galore!

We had a Great MUD Day! I didn't think C could have this much FUN!