A warm afternoon found the kids outdoors when a rainstorm blew in. There was no lightning, so I joined them on the back porch for a few minutes, and we watched as the rain went from slow to fast, gentle pit-pats to pounding blasts.

They wanted to catch the rain, so my son rushed forward to place a container in the yard. Soon, it was filling up. They were ecstatic!

The storm was a brief one, blowing out as quickly as it had blown in. Soon, the kids were back in the yard: looking for a rainbow, splashing in the puddles, scooping up their water, and digging in the mud.

It got me thinking about kids and water. Kids and dirt. Kids and sticks and stones and pine cones (a pile of which has grown on my porch since the weather has improved). Kids and the “stuff” of the outdoors. But mostly kids and water.

When our firstborn reached toddlerhood and we discovered how much he loved playing in water outdoors, my husband I considered buying him something like this activity table. I admit it: I was probably attracted to the table by how clean the children in the advertisements always look. Here was a way for Ben to play with the types of things he wanted that would not involve thick muddy footprints across my kitchen floor and mountains of laundry.

Luckily, the table went un-bought. My son got very good at finding other ways to play with water, sand, and dirt. Now, as he and his sister collaborate on finding ways to play with the water and dirt they love, I am glad the table isn’t in their way. The footprints will clean up (and are drastically minimized since they leave their water clogs just outside the door). The clothes can be washed. Their type of imaginative play seems perfect without such devices, rules, and boundaries.

I’m not the only one who feels this way. NPR’s Alix Spiegel reported on the importance of what he called “old-fashioned play” just a couple of weeks ago, while the Literacy Trust has been drawing attention to the issue far longer and Pamela Paul’s new book Parenting Inc. explores the exploding market of parenting and play “necessities.”

And let’s not forget the impact of outdoors play on children’s health. Nearly two decades ago, the UK’s David Strachan proposed that the sudden increase in incidence of hay fever and allergic diseases may be due to “declining family size, improved household amenities and higher standards of personal cleanliness” (emphasis added). According to this “hygiene hypothesis,” it was through contact with microorganisms (such as those found in dirt) that children’s immune systems learned not to react to all foreign matter.

Many doctors still support this idea. (Do a quick search of “hygiene hypothesis” and “farm” with the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed database to get a sense of the supportive research.) So, I suppose I should feel good about the dirt on their hands, on their faces, and under their fingernails (even if I don’t about the dirt on the kitchen floor).

And so I will continue to send them out to play—in the elements and with their imaginations as the most important “tool” of all.