Exploring Our World

We have our very own muddy kitchen for all children to explore. A mud kitchen is a lot more than just providing children with an area of soil to dig over. It brings together cooking with life-size utensils and role play from the home and outdoor environment into one sensory experience. Mud kitchens provide lots of opportunities to support children’s learning and development across the seven different areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework. Explorative play is important as there is no wrong or right way. It therefore allows all children to engage with the activity without worrying about whether they are able to achieve the end product. Playing with mud allows a child to be creative, develop fine motor skills as well physical skills. The mud kitchen enables children to role-play at home cooking. It provides lots of opportunities to support language development. The child’s explorations with the natural environment will help him or her to learn some basic science, eg how the earth or soil changes when it is mixed with water. Numeracy skills will be developed as the child learns to measure volume using the different containers in the kitchen, filling them with mud or water.

Here at Little Footsteps we offer weekly P.E Lessons to the older per-school children. We supply the children with sports clothing to wear and depending on the weather this takes place either inside or outside. The children learn skills such as dressing and undressing, balancing, running skillfully, the impact of exercise has on the body and much more.