Dishing up the Dirt with Pentagon’s Brand New Mud Kitchen Range!

Earlier this year we spilled the beans and brought you a sneak preview of our brand new Mud Kitchen design, with one talented Young Designer winning one for her school thanks to her superb entry in our ‘Design a Playground’ competition (make sure you’re signed up to our social media pages for a slice of the action next time!).

We’re now delighted to serve you with the news that our entire New Mud Kitchen Range is ready to order - and it’s the icing on the cake for our Messy Play collection of playground products for schools and nurseries!

Our Products team really know how to use their loaves - they always formulate the best recipes for outdoor learning equipment that engages and excites children in their play at EYFS, KS1 and KS2, providing high educational value at the same time. They don’t do anything half-baked!

Messy, sensory play, combined with role play, are essential ingredients in any young child’s learning journey.

It’s through these bread-and-butter opportunities to explore, experiment, test, trial and error, that they can begin to understand the world around them, how they fit into it, and the social and emotional skills they need to interact with others, to stay safe and to enjoy their experience as humans! 

This is why our Products Team have been working extra-hard to ensure that our new Mud Kitchen range is as close to real-life as possible - so that children can replicate what they see both at home and out and about, developing their understanding and getting really imaginative with their play!

What’s on the Menu…

Our new Mud Kitchen range has everything your smart cookies knead to make their outdoor messy play dreams crumb true!

The Mud Kitchen with Oven is a sociable two-sided Mud Kitchen that features:

An all-new wipe-down worktop surface material, making it as easy as pie to clean up the kitchen after the busiest of bake-off sessions

• A realistic single oven space with a detailed see-through oven door - don’t forget your oven gloves!
• Chalkboard circular kitchen hobs for mark-making and stir-fry creating 
• ‘Hot and Cold’ moveable knobs for controlling the temperature of the oven in imaginative games (ideal for developing comparative language and vocabulary through role play)
• Pantry shelves underneath the worktop, providing a spacious storage space for self-selection of pans, utensils and a supply of interesting ingredients 
• Two removable sinks and a drying area on the worktop, offering plenty of space in the design for cooking up a storm, mixing potions and making mud pies - what will those little whisk-takers brave getting their hands into next? There’s much to discover here if you want to come and give it a try!
• More easy-reach shelving above the mud storage, with a slot for placing Scribble Boards. These mini chalkboards can act as menus for children to write down their dish of the day, or recipe cards with written instructions for children to follow and share with each other while making their signature dish!
• Handy hooks on the side of the Mud Kitchen to hang Scribble Boards, tea towels and aprons
• A reach-through serving hatch where little chefs can pass their plates through to waiting staff and hungry customers! This feature is designed to enable greater role play interaction, communication and language development  
• A larger Chalkboard mark-making area at the back of the Mud Kitchen alongside the serving hatch - the perfect place for maître d' to fine-tune their fine motor skills writing up or drawing what’s cooking at the Mud Café today!

The Mud Kitchen with Sink is another fun variation of the oven-based version, with additional features including:

• A Play Tap with moveable ‘hot and cold’ knobs 
• A realistic see-through washing machine door in place of the oven door, with capacity, to hold all heavily soiled items!
• A large, removable sink area to fill with all kinds of sensory substances to explore, promoting fine motor development and STEAM learning - mashing up coloured jelly, searching for hidden treasures in frothy foam, mixing up mud mousse, changing sand textures, perfecting a ‘perfume’, floating and sinking objects in water or simply ‘washing by hand’ - you choose!  

Want to have your cake and eat it too?!

Every high-spec playground kitchen needs a must-have Mud Island - this is the inclusive social hub where mud-cuisine connoisseurs can gather around to create gourmet muddy concoctions together! 

Our fun new Mud Island is the perfect companion to a Mud Kitchen, but equally effective for messy play as a stand-alone product too.

EYFS pupils can benefit from memorable tactile learning, sensory discovery, fine motor manipulation, communication and language development and even linking maths and literacy - achieving all kinds of amazing in their learning goals across the EYFS learning areas. Special features include:

• A spacious removable sink with access from all sides - great for inclusive play mixing up marvellous medicines (just ask George!) 
• A wipe-down worktop surface for quick and easy turnover between different dishing-up activities (no unmanageable mess and no waiting around - Gordon would be proud!)
• A Chalkboard mark making area for listing, labelling, and laying out mud cakes   

• Storage shelving underneath where little hands can easily access your choice of measuring containers, pots and pans  

As experts in designing and building playgrounds for schools and nurseries that can be enjoyed by children all year round, we understand that having outdoor play activities interrupted by inclement weather conditions really takes the biscuit.

We’ve designed all of our Mud Kitchen products to be weatherproof, so they can live outdoors and be put to good use by busy bakers whatever the weather - certainly no soggy bottoms here!

On Your Marks? Ready, Steady……..Baaake!