Connecting children to nature through Mud
Changing the State of Play with Mud between your Toes, funded by the Big Lottery Fund, is a project that is part of the Mud programme. It has given us the opportunity to take the ethos of our Mud programme to all sorts of community groups in all sorts of ways
The Mud play project uses playful means and approaches to encourage and support children on a lifelong relationship with nature. Our methods are diverse and different. Like creating stick people, and then asking families to adopt them, or hanging large fishing nets from trees over rivers and asking delegates attending a conference to climb over them ... holding a glass of water, or making rafts out of recycled milk cartons one day, while attending a play strategy meeting the next. Or helping children track down a giant in the middle of Bodmin Moor, and then making a film with traveller and gypsy children about their experiences of play. Or when we can’t get to nature, how we bring nature to us, like using natural materials to aid the design of real play spaces, or the many different ways you can transport water about. And when we’re not doing play, we’re talking about it, at conferences, seminars, and meetings.
What is nature? Well, for some it is simply watering the plant on the kitchen table, while for others, it is hanging out of a tree with all your mates, upside down! Nature means different things to different people. Some children are happy digging holes with the end of a stick, while others get a whole stack of sticks, make a den out of them, tear the den down, and then make a raft and go navigating the bends and twists of the nearest river.
We focus on connecting children to nature, because we believe many children, and many adults too, are spending very little time interacting with nature; modern lifestyles, anxiety about strangers, decreasing family and leisure time, media influences, increased traffic, increased focus on organised educational activities ... all these things play a part in disconnecting us from nature.
It doesn’t matter what sort of nature-based experiences we have, just as long as we have them.
'Mud between your Toes' aims to connect children and young people to the world they live in - to experience, understand and celebrate their sense of place and purpose in the natural world and in their communities.
Eden is a charity and we need help to fund our work. Making a donation will enable more children and young people to take part in our Mud between your Toes programme.