Homeschool Adventures - Our Word of the Week

(Mass noun)  Soft, sticky matter resulting from mixing soil with water. 

It is this mixture of soil and water which my children seem to be covered in for a significant part of each day. It gets on their shirts, trousers, coats, in their hair and under their fingernails. Their wellies are constantly caked in the stuff and on one occasion this week we had to tip muddy water out of the little one's boots after he had spent a few hours in the stream. Crumbly trails of dried up mud get trailed down the hall by the mysterious mud-dropping fairy - well it must be a fairy because it is never either one of my boys. At the end of each day the bathroom sink looks as though twenty soldiers have washed in it after a weekend on manoeuvres in a swamp. The washing machine is constantly moaning away washing the dirty, grass stained attire of my two intrepid explorers and I am forced to buy a new nail brush at increasingly frequent intervals. 

That's mud for you. Messy, workload increasing mud. 

I imagine that you are thinking that mud is my enemy, hated and despised for the mess it leaves. But you would be wrong. For me muddy footprints across the rug can mean only one wonderful thing - a happy, pink cheeked, often tired, probably hungry, gorgeous child slumped at the end of the trail. Dirty fingernails scream of making interesting, imaginative things in the forest and muddy trousers say to me that some tremendous tree climbing or den building has been happening. Mud is what's left behind after a day spent playing and for us, learning in the wild. Proudly to be sported as the trophy of a risk well measured or a rope swing well swung. 

It has been a superbly muddy week for us although with casualties along the way - namely a hole in a welly and a hole in a puddle-suit knee. But what a fun, adventure filled, outdoor week we've had. 

Mud - friend or foe? What do you think?