Sponsored post: Persil Dirt Is Good Campaign to tackle play imbalance and help get children outdoors

On Sunday afternoon the children announced they were going outside to play with the mud kitchen in the garden, which we received as part of a paid-for collaboration with Persil. It didn’t seem to matter that the kitchen was in 50 pieces spread all over the ground and the professional I had booked from Task Rabbit to assemble the thing was yet to arrive.

Big Girl and Big Boy still somehow seemed to be able to cook up a storm.

Children’s imagination keeps taking me by surprise, and they always seem to make toys out of things I would never have expected them to find particularly amusing. With little one’s ability to turn every activity into a game, I was surprised to hear a study conducted by Persil amongst parents in the UK and Ireland revealed that by age 7 the average UK child will have spent 2 years and three months of their life in front of a screen. More than half of that time was categorised as ‘mindless’ screen time – spent without family or friends, in solitary, screen-based activities.

There are obvious opportunities for learning and developing while using screens, but I liked hearing that Persil’s Dirt Is Good campaign is on a mission to tackle the play imbalance by helping reducing screen time and getting children outdoors.

For us, the mud kitchen has been the big topic of conversation ever since we heard it was coming to us, and the fact that the children had to sit on the cold artificial grass to do their cooking didn’t appear to be a problem. They were putting the battens from the soon-to-be-made kitchen together, using the cupboard door as an oven, and the tray for the kitchen seemed to work wonders as a pantry. The chef duo worked hard together on preparing a full meal by mixing sand, fallen leaves and water. As part of the game, Big Boy even put together a bonfire with the pieces of the mud kitchen that I had given up on putting together two days earlier after realising I really didn’t have much experience with a drill.

There seems to be so many easy ways for parents to encourage children to play outdoors, and I don’t even think they always need specific toys. They are super happy playing with fallen leaves, for example.

Over half term, we tried to do more in nature and tackled a new tree on three days. We picked fallen leaves and looked up the name of the tree at home, pressed the leaves under heavy books and used coloured paper and contact paper to create cards and fridge art.

To help get children outdoors, Persil has collaborated with a series of initiatives to provide parents with practical solutions to addressing the play imbalance. This year, Persil is the official laundry supplier of England Rugby, and in addition, Persil will be supporting grassroots rugby to celebrate families spending time outdoors.

Persil is also sponsoring Parkrun, which helps ensure there are hundreds of free events that take place every weekend across the UK and encourages families to get outdoors, and together with IKEA, National Geographic and The LEGO Foundation, Persil has also helped create the Real Play Coalition – a movement that prioritises the importance of ‘real play’.

With a Scandinavian background, I’ve been focused on trying to get the children outdoors despite our city lifestyle. It’s been important for me to make space for outdoor toys like a little slide and a small play house, and we also keep various ball game sets, skipping ropes, a sand box, hula hoops, and my personal favourite – elastics. Elastics takes me back to my own childhood, and I’ve tried teaching my little ones some of the easiest ways to jump around the elastics which we use in between two chairs.

To get involved in the Dirt is Good campaign, go to www.persil.com/dirtisgood #DirtIsGood #Ad

Tags: Ad, Autumn, Games, Garden games, Leaves, Messy play, Mud kitchen, Outdoor, Outdoor activities, Outdoor play, Outdoor toys, Persil, Sponsored post