What if one of childhood’s messiest experiences could deepen a child’s connection to the natural world?
That question is at the heart of 91ŃÇÉ« PhD student Ayesha Menezes’ doctoral research. Through her work, Menezes explores how mud play helps children see themselves as part of the natural world, fostering care, responsibility and belonging.
Her research comes as many children have fewer opportunities for unstructured outdoor play and engagement with nature. Risk-averse settings and busy urban lifestyles have reduced interaction with the natural world, prompting Menezes to understand how learning might look different if it emerged through children’s relationships with the land, water, weather and natural materials around them.
To explore this idea, Menezes took her research outside the University for Mud Day 2026, an event developed as part of her doctoral work. Held at Evergreen Brick Works children’s garden, the Mud Day invited children and caregivers to explore and create with mud.
Instead of planning structured activities with predetermined outcomes, the event invited children to engage in open-ended play experiences that included a mud kitchen, construction site, gardening, seed bomb making, beading and a collaborative mural. An interactive performance also encouraged participants to explore relationships between the sun, wind, rain and mud.
For Menezes, the goal was to encourage outdoor play and shift how children experience the natural world.
“Instead of learning about nature, participants were learning with nature,” she says. “Children shaped their own experiences by choosing the activities they wanted to participate in.”
The event demonstrated how nature-based play can strengthen relationships and foster a sense of belonging. Menezes observed that children who typically play independently began playing collaboratively, while parents engaged as co-creators rather than observers.
Parents noted the atmosphere nurtured connections among children, caregivers, educators as well as the natural materials and environment.
Menezes says that of the 47 participating children – ranging in ages from 11 months to 11 years – only one had previously experienced muddy play. This, she says, shows how uncommon the experience is and reinforces the importance of spaces where children can explore freely, take manageable risks and build relationships with their environment.
The activities also encouraged children to see themselves as active participants in caring for the environment, says Menezes, which resulted in a child-led land acknowledgement during the event’s closing circle – a moment that one parent described as particularly meaningful.
“Reflections shared during the closing circle suggested that children left with a greater sense of connection to their environment,” she says. 
Developed as part of Menezes' doctoral research and dissertation, Mud Day 2026 was supported by a cross-Faculty team of 91ŃÇÉ« student collaborators from the Faculty of Graduate Studies, the Faculty of Education and the Faculty of Science, with mentorship from Professor Lucy Angus and support from Evergreen Brick Works. Collaborators also included undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students: Ari Para, Catalina Ramirez, Ian Chan, Tristan Castro Pozo, Elise Nicolas and Rachel Leveille.
Moving forward, Menezes is working to develop what she calls a “curriculum of muddy worlding” – a relational framework that reimagines learning through children’s encounters with mud and the natural world. She is also expanding the Mud Day model into a co-design approach that brings together educators, researchers, families and local communities.