Digging and dumping with COFFEE MUD

That’s how I feel about play and encourage my kids to play in new ways as often as I can.  I am also a cheap mommy.  I had a bag of stale coffee in the fridge and it kept staring me in  the face every time I opened the door.  It needed to be thrown away.  My mind went to wondering how I could use it?  To recycle it and not just trash it.  We recently played outside in the mud and thought coffee might be a great alternative to dirt and water. I know some people prefer their kids not play in the dirt for good reasons. Coffee mud could be a great alternative.

These are the things I got out to use in the set up.  I took the bag of coffee and poured it out in the tray.  Then added the toys.

I traced play in the coffee grounds and sat it on the table for my son to find.

When he came in he was soooo happy!

Hands in.

Lets play.

This made the house smell so good!

Everything my son plays with lately has to have trucks!

He is dumping his coffee grounds off to the “trash.”

This is messy so play at your own clean up;-)

And to make it more fun.

Water is in the coffee.

He is playing like it is a river.

Oh look daddy is home and joining in on the fun.

Looks like mud but smells so good!

I think daddy ended up having as much fun as big brother did.  It does make a mess.  I should have put junk clothes on my son before he sat down to play and maybe a table cloth under him.  Everything cleaned up ok for me though.  I stain sprayed his clothes and washed and they came clean.  He came clean too, he just smelled like coffee.  Even having to clean up I would say it was a success.  He has played in it a few times.  I also made playdough with some of the coffee. (Glitter mocha playdough) I love to reuse.  Hope you and your kids can have a great sensory experience too.

Over at Train Up a Child they had some coffee fun too in a different way.  You should check it out.  Looks like they had a lot of fun too.  If you read this post you will find out how she got free coffee grounds to use for play.

If you prefer good old fashion mud to play in you may like this post.

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