Natural Objects Cooking

A very simple outdoor activity for kids that is good fun to try at home. It encourages children to explore natural objects and who doesn’t like water, pretending to cook and making a bit of mess? I decided to do this activity as we had lots of leftover natural items that we had collected for our other activities this week: Seed Collector I Spy Jars.

Set Up

This is really a case of whatever you have to hand at home. A variety of natural garden bits makes it more interesting and allows children to choose what they want to use but any leaves, seeds, twigs, flower petals even grass cuttings would work. My two enjoyed using glass jars earlier on this week in our Seed Collection I Spy Jars activity so thought I would use them again. I added real kitchen utensils and some metal mixing bowls.

Although I had originally set this outdoor activity for kids up as a cooking activity I wanted to refrain from giving them instructions as to what to do and let them play and explore as they wanted to. Both had different ideas of how they wanted to play with the natural objects. F wanted to cook but M wanted to make shakers. I was happy to let them do what they wanted. Both were exploring the various natural items and it gave us another opportunity to discuss what they all were and their names.

They both continued to play with this outdoor activity for quite some time and having lots of fun. F’s motor skills were getting a workout; scooping, pouring, mixing and using her pincer grip to pick up some of the smaller items from the basket. M had created her very own science experiment linked to sound and she explored the different effect of using different items and different volumes of water in her jars when she hit them with a stick. Cleaning up this outdoor activity for kids was a doddle too as it all got poured in the compost. Simple.

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