If you grew up in the 80s or 90s, you probably played outside a lot. You’re very familiar with that earthy, grounding feeling of dirt under your fingernails, grass between your bare toes. The magic of a fresh breeze. You rode your bike, went to the park, played games with your friends, and did a lot with your imagination. Including mixing up “potions” out in nature.

Magical Memories

You know how this goes. It starts with some dirt. Sometimes you’d put it in a container of some kind. Other times, you would just dig a hole. You’d add water to make it soupy. Already, your hands would be dirty as you hunted down the best stick for stirring and scouted other ingredients to bring your magic potion to life.

“Eye of newt,” you’d whisper in a magical voice as you dropped a round stone into the mud puddle and stirred it with the chosen stick. Next, you’d add the magic sprinkles (grass clippings) and fairy wings (flower petals). Maybe you’d say some magic words as you stirred. Maybe you’d say something you wanted to happen (“Please can my parents let me get a puppy”) or something you wanted to stop happening (“With this magic potion, the mean kids at school will have to be nice to me from now on”).

You’d pretend you were a witch, or a medicine maker from ancient history, or a fairy cook preparing soup for your restaurant. By the end of the day, you’d be sunburnt and dirty, with a mind full of magic and a heart stuffed to the brim with contentment. And when you were scolded into a bath later, you’d be thinking about how fun it had been. How worth it. How you’d probably make another potion tomorrow.

The Value of Potion Play

Since time immemorial, children have been using their imaginations and stirring up potions, believing in magic. Potion play is such a staple of childhood that many of us can’t imagine growing up without it. But as the years have marched on, it’s become less and less common to see kids outside, digging in the dirt and making magic with their imaginations. It’s more common to see a child with their head bent over a tablet than it is to see a child with dirty knees these days.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong about electronics (some of the apps for kids can be great for learning new things and building intellectual skills), we all know that unplugged play is vital to child development as well. Potion play, in particular, is an excellent way for kids to experience growth in a wide variety of ways. There’s a reason so many of you did it, even though you didn’t know the reason at the time. Curious? Let’s break it down.

Children learn best when they’re engaged. To anyone who has spent time around children, that won’t be a surprise. Trying to reason with a disinterested child can be like nailing pudding to the wall. But did you know that a child’s engagement can be boiled down into a checklist of three important facets? Hands-on, head-on, and heart-on. Potion play encourages engagement in all three of these areas.

Hands-on

There’s just something special about doing things with your own hands. Especially in this world where you can hire people to do just about anything for you, the act of crafting something can be extremely therapeutic. Potion play is all about creating things with your hands. Our potion kits provide you with the ingredients to make a specific set of potions. They also include recipes (don’t worry)! Everything included in the kit is child-friendly - safe, and either biodegradable or reusable - so you can feel good about your child getting creative.

Crafting potions helps children learn fine motor skills and kinesthetic learning, as well as training the attention span through unplugged, screen-free play. Which means that your child can develop more of an appreciation for the world around them and learn how to interact with it more confidently.

Head-on

If you ever pretended you were a mad scientist while mixing up backyard mud potions, you’ll be glad to know you weren’t that far off! A great deal of science involves reactions between substances, and making potions as a child is a wonderful way to learn about these basic scientific principles. While crafting one of our potions, your child will be able to witness scientific reactions such as fizzing, color changes, and dissolution.

They’ll start to gain an intellectual understanding of how the world works on a scientific, chemical level. Who knows? Maybe they’ll grow up to be a groundbreaking biochemist, all because of a potion kit!

In addition to scientific learning, our potion kits also put your child’s mental health first. Every kit contains affirmation cards, designed to help your child learn that their mind is worth caring for. Every child has challenges, and affirmations can be a sort of armor that helps protect them from the worst that the world can throw at them. Learning to use affirmations and positive self-talk from an early age will help your child grow into a more self-assured adult who is aware of their inherent worth as a person. They will learn to love themselves, which is one of the most important things any of us can learn.

Heart-on

Engaging a child’s heart is arguably one of the things people neglect the most when it comes to learning and play. For a child to learn, they must be interested in what is happening. Potion play with our kits is colorful, exciting, and magical. And children believe in magic. In their hearts, every child wants to see a real-life reaction happen when they say an affirmation, because that means it’s working. To say something aloud is powerful in its own right, but to also see a visual representation of it in the form of a potion in a bottle…that is what magic looks like.

When your child feels that their words and thoughts have external efficacy, it helps them link causation to reactions in their minds. And, when the causal factors in play here are positive self-talk and affirmations, this means that your child will internalize those messages more strongly. This helps your child grow their compassion, both for themself and for others. In other words, it engages and grows their heart.

Brew Up some Magic

All children need to have their hands, heads, and hearts engaged and nurtured when they play. You did this without realizing it when you made your pretend potions with mud and sticks as a kid. There’s a reason you feel so nostalgic about it, after all. Times were simpler, then. Now though, it’s harder. The rules have changed. Children are spending more time indoors, using technology for learning and entertainment. And they’re missing out on key elements of learning and growth.

So let the nostalgia win!

Buy a potion kit. Settle in with your child and all the materials. Take some time to mix up some magic together. Let your child know the same satisfaction you felt all those years ago, when you tossed dry leaves and pebbles into mud and declared it to be magic. When you imagined you were someone ancient or brilliant or mysterious. Pass on that magic to the next generation. And who knows? You may feel an echo of that old magic reaching out to you, too.