Review: Mud & Bloom

Mud & Bloom are subscription boxes that inspire children to connect to nature with different activities delivered every month. My wife is a big gardener anyway, and Snappy is always helping so this was very much something we wanted to try.

We were sent the October box to review and Snappy nearly opened it before I got home from work when it turned up. My wife had to hide it from him.

He was really keen to get it open as soon as I got home and get started on some of the activities inside. I was worried that with the weather we were never going to be able to any of them but the box is great for both rainy day activities and get your bum wiggles out activities.

The October box contains:

• Plant your own organic tulips
• Make your own nature box
• Grow organic winter purslane
• Preserve leaves with wax
• Autumn fruit and seed spotter
• Nature news and quiz

Wax Leaves

After some investigating, I definitly wanted to try preserving some leaves and today we headed out to find some leaves. We did our usual route around the village and through the park, picking up leaves as we went. Snappy also wanted to do some “flower leaves” which is now what petals are called. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.

Snappy always has a lot of questions, so it was good to get him asking about the different leaves, and we also spotted a broken snail shell, a cool fungus and a massive slug with an orange bum on our walk. The rain held off long enough for us to get a lot of leaves and we even managed to find some flower leaves that had blown off too.

You get full instructions for everything and four blocks of beeswax to use for your leaves and we set up some newspaper (and toast) on the living room floor (bethend was making a Halloween costume on the table) and started dipping our leaves. I let Snappy do this himself, carefully, and I did some too. Some didn’t work as expected, but some came out looking really cool. The flowers kinda worked.

I made up the little paper nature box. I know everything is plastic-free and organic, and recyclable, but I would not have included the paper used to make the boxes. Most households have a ton of paper that could be used just as well and cut to size.

Snappy did not want me to make the box but I persisted because he’s awkward. Of course, as soon as I made the box, he wanted to put his leaves in it.

Plants!

I love that you get stuff to plant with the Mud & Bloom box which was actually what sold it to me – in October’s box you get tulip bulbs and winter purslane. We have new tires full of dirt that need plants, so they will be going in there and my wife is planning to plant the purslane soon. The instructions suggest egg cartons as seedboxes which is a great idea, but we have plenty of seeding pots to use! We already have a few edibles in our garden, herbs, though of course, our vegetable patch is empty after harvesting.

Keep an eye on our instagram for more pictures as we start planting and finishing up the activities in the box.

I really like this subscription box. I like that it’s influenced by forest school thinking and designed by teachers. Everything is organic and the entire thing is plastic-free. Other than the unnecessary paper to make the nature box with I really approve of it environmentally.

More importantly Snappy really liked it too and it really compliments our parenting style (the good nature influence side, not the hap-hazard winging it side). I definitely recommend everyone give it a try – especially in these winter months where the opportunities to learn and enjoy nature might not be as obvious as during the summer and spring!

Check out Mud & Bloom on their website and if you use the code QUEERLITTLEFAMILY you’ll get 15% off a first single or sibling month to month box until November 23rd 2019.