When I see the children playing in the mud, they are connecting with the Earth in the most basic and profound way. How can we expect them to understand and care for our Earth if they haven't been elbow deep in it? On a recent spring day in an area of our playground affectionately known as Crystal Mountain, the children were digging a rivulet to connect one puddle to another.
They had been working on this project for days, their interest never waned. It took thoughtful planning, collaboration, and ingenuity, not to mention intense physical labor and tenacity. One child would be digging, anticipating where the water would flow and how they could tweak the engineering to send it on a different path. Others collected small sticks, stones and wood chips to fashion a dam and studied how well it stood the test of water pressure. Over and over they transported water from the puddle and studied its flow down the hill, tossing leaves and small bits in only to be carried away as the water forged a path back down to the puddle.
This was an investigation of their own creation, totally child led, born from a "What if?" deep inside their most curious selves. As it got closer to time to go inside, I observed one boy standing with mud on each hand, studying it closely. "Mud is dirt and water," he said, as if discovering it for the first time.
Children need to hold dirt and feel its properties. On our playground, they have dug in the rich soil of the gardens, the sand, wet and dry in the sandbox, sometimes even frozen. They've seen the soil back by the fence so dry it takes to the air in clouds of dust and so wet they sink inches into it and hear the sounds of their feet breaking the suction and the marvelous ooze between their fingers. The children enjoy filling pans and cake tins with sand, mulch, mud, and dirt and decorating it with flowers, wood chips and leaves, an unbirthday cake to celebrate the everyday.
Their pretend invites our participation and is the ticket for entry into their world and strengthens bonds between child and child, adult and child, and child and Earth.
