I love activities that introduce new textures to a toddler, even if they might seem a little gross to us grown-ups. Veronika has no qualms about getting her hands dirty, so on today’s menu was mud worms!

I cooked up a batch of linguine for the “worms”, and then placed them on a shallow tray that we could take out to the patio. Now we just needed to bury them in “dirt” a.k.a. chocolate pudding.

She gleefully began scooping through, using both fingers and a sand shovel

In retrospect, I would have used a lot more pudding and a lot fewer “worms”, as this wasn’t really hunting or digging. We just had lots of worms crawling all over the tray! But of course the pretend play was a bit advanced for her anyway, and she loved scooping.

We got our fingers in the mixture together and used words like “slimy” and “goopy” as we played.

When the noodles landed on the patio, they did sort of look like little worms after a rainstorm.

Then Veronika decided it was even more fun to scoop them up from the tray and toss them on top of other items on the patio.

Admittedly that made clean-up a little tougher, but she was having so much fun I didn’t stop her! All in all this was good gooey fun.