Hello everyone! Teacher Types has been branching out over recent months. I have mastered linky parties, joined a couple of FB blogger groups, and am now embarking on guest posts (some I'm writing and some to be featured on my blog). Guest posts are beneficial for both parties, and today I am warmly welcoming Benita. Her little girl was born in the same month as my little miss, and was a teacher too before becoming a mum. She was also the very first person who left a comment on my blog! Benita recently shared her amazing outdoor kitchen on our Facebook birth club and I was so inspired! Nature Play is an area my blog is missing - so take it away Benita!
I love reading Lauren’s blog, and am
completely guilty of checking it 100 times more often than there is a new post,
so I was very excited to be asked to write this post! Its an honour to be here!
I thought I’d share with you my latest
creation… our mud kitchen, which my 18month old is LOVING! Outdoor kitchens are
lots of fun, great learning opportunities, good for team or individual play for
many ages and they’re pretty cheap and easy to put together. So I thought I’d
share mine and some tips etc to hopefully inspire you to start on one in your
backyard!
Let me take you on a tour...
Every kitchen needs spices and ingredients!
I decided to involve Miss E in the
process here instead of just surprising her with a beautifully finished
kitchen, and I think this really added to her enjoyment of the kitchen once it
was finished, as she discovered all the jars of treasures we had collected over
the weeks before.
Together we washed out jars and filled them
with all sorts of things. You can use anything as ingredients really, we
collected driftwood, sand, sawdust, black tea, many different types of nuts,
small rocks, shells, and I cut some wattle branches into little circular disks.
Other fresh ingredients can really add to the sensory experience of cooking – fresh
herbs, coloured water, real vegetables or fruits like lemons or whatever you
have an abundance of in your garden. Think about texture, colour, aroma, size
and try to collect a variety. If you have plants you don’t want picked often,
you will need to set very clear boundaries about what can and can’t be used in
the kitchen.
Another
favourite part of our kitchen was the oven and many many cakes and muffins have
been baked and checked on here already! Our oven is simply an old dresser with
the draws removed and some knobs attached. There are many fancier ovens out
there, but this one works quite well for us, and as she is only little, having
no door makes it very accessible with two hands full of muffin tray –especially
when that muffin tray has been ever so carefully loaded up with banksia nuts
and pinecones topped with grass cuttings and daisies. Below the oven shelf is
tray storage and above is a simple stove top because you have to have somewhere
to boil your kettle and use that frying pan!
Lots of hooks for hanging various utensils
are always fun, and while these are tricky for little hands, they’re great
practice! With littler people bigger hooks are better, make sure your hooks are
at an easy to access level –they may look better hanging on the back wall above
your sink etc, but won’t be very accessible at all if your chefs are small.
Don’t feel limited to just the back wall either, use the sides of your benches,
nearby trees, whatever takes your fancy!
Clearly
you HAVE to have a sink! But it can be as simple as a tub that sits on the
bench filled with water. Our sink is a sliding keyboard bench nailed onto two
draws standing on end with their handles removed. The sink is simply a mixing
bowl sunk into the bench. It pops in and out easily enough for refilling. Add
some dishwashing liquid and dish brush for a bit of extra washing up fun! I
hung a little curtain below the sink to allow for some extra hidden storage for
all those messy Tupperware style bowls and pots etc that kitchens seem to
collect which never stay tidy. It is also often used for storing stews that
aren’t finished the day before! The curtain is a scrap of raincoating, so it
stands up to the outdoors nicely. Miss E chose the apple fabric and I like the
fresh kitcheny feel they add.
Utensils and
tools are also important as they help with imagination and the possibilities of
what can be created. Our favourites are a big yellow ladle, a whisk, a muffin
tray, frying pan and a teapot. Obviously you need some standard things too like
spoons, trays, mixing bowls, jugs etc but its good to have a few exciting
things too like an interesting shaped jelly mould perhaps, or an ice block
tray. We went on a hunt at our local op shop together and managed to get all
our kitchen tools for $5.50. Miss E had great fun choosing with me. Remember
your kitchen is outdoors, so choose plastic and stainless steel over things
that will rust or perish quickly. Ceramic isn’t the best idea with little
people either.
Not only does an
outdoor kitchen help with fine motor skills, it develops imagination,
creativity and vocabulary. Use it as an opportunity to talk about many things
you would not usually discuss with your toddler, introduce new words, and as
they learn more, use more specialist words.
While water is
needed, it’s a lot of fun to transport the water in in buckets etc, however the
closer your dirt source is, the better. If you can’t set up your kitchen right
beside or IN your dirt source, make sure you have large buckets of dirt or sand
or both on hand. It is easy to bring in other ingredients like grass clippings,
leaves, blossoms etc as needed. And obviously the older the chefs, the less
direction they will need in collecting and bringing these ingredients into the
kitchen.
Miss E plays
quite independently in her kitchen, but it is also fun to join her and suggest
new ways she could use tools, or combine ingredients etc. However as your chefs
get older you will need to assess the role you play in their kitchen
activities, perhaps taking more of a silent observatory role as they become
capable of creating and imagining new possibilities on their own.
Making an outdoor
kitchen can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be, and there is
plenty of inspiration out there on the web. It really matter how fancy it is
though, just get started and have fun making it and I’m sure your little people
will have a ball playing in it. After all, what kid doesn’t love playing in
the mud? Get them involved in the creation of their kitchen and they might have
more fun playing and creating in it!
Now I'm a firm believer in that sharing is caring. So to thank Benita for writing a guest post for my blog, I wanted to include a special shout out for her handmade wooden toys and puzzles - Little Bird in a Beehive. Thanks so much Benita!
