PIC has a stunning new mud kitchen for the children to play with on our Nature Playground. Upon seeing it, children instantly swarmed to it to discover all the fun it holds. A mud kitchen is an outdoor setup for children to pretend to prepare and cook food using any combination of mud, sand and...

June 29 was International Mud Day. Each year PIC celebrates International Mud Day by creating muddy, messy spaces on our playground, blacktop, and tot lot for children to explore. We know the benefits of messy play - it allows for open ended exploration of materials, it stimulates children's natural...

Yesterday was International Mud Day and this year we got muddy in our cohorts! We celebrated with splashing and squishing, digging and cooking, crawling and sliding, and lots more fun. Take a look! But, before you go: Mud Day is not all play, it is a healthy physical and social-emotional activity...

PIC parent (and Tree Philly Program Manager) Erica Smith Fichman spearheaded an exciting tree replacement project that culminated with a tree planting circle this morning on PIC's Magic Circle Nature Playground. Erica and PIC Facility Assistant Josh Harmony both have children in PIC's Butterflies...

August Message from Deb Green I’ve recently returned from a trip that took me north to New Hampshire and south to North Carolina. The outdoors and nature were at the center of my travels. I was invited to New Hampshire to participate in the closing plenary panel discussion of the Natural Start...

Mud Day is one of my favorite days of the year! It brings together two elements of early learning that PIC is committed to provide—play-based learning and meaningful experiences with nature. PIC's Magic Circle nature playground offers (especially on Mud Day) unstructured, nature play with endless...

Saturday proved to be a beautiful day for this year's Day of Play—the biggest and best ever! Our family concert by Ants on a Log was standing room only, and the playground was filled with families from the PIC community and beyond. Many thanks to Day of Play committee members Erin Morris and Tamika...

Enriched Nature Learning at PIC As we dive deeper into outdoor education at PIC, we want to introduce our new Nature Educator (a newly created position) who will further engage PIC children in enriched discovery, as well as support teachers with less experience outdoors to incorporate nature in...

International Mud Day is celebrated the world over to highlight the importance of nature play in healthy child development. On June 29, we connected with the rich earth in the most squishy, tactile way in celebration of Mud Day. These pictures say it all...See more photos on facebook.com...

The Benefits of Outdoor PlayI’m certain that most will agree that it has been a LONG winter. While I look forward to spring for so many reasons, one of the biggest is how much I love seeing the children have opportunities for long periods of daily outdoor play. Be it digging in the sand and dirt...