Creative Play

Some say children don't know how to be creative today like they used to do. They have too many sophisticated toys and have lost the pleasures of creating their own amusements. I have not seen that to be true with my grandchildren. I suspect parents play a big role in whether children learn to be imaginative.

This trip, as I usually do, I found some small animals to give them to play with and as a remembrance of where they had been. I love the small Schleich animal figures where each creature is so perfectly sculpted. Each child got a bear and I told them if they could work out who got which of four other wild animals, they could have them also. Before we left, they had solved that division. Necessity is the mother of invention.

One day they took them out onto the little beach and created habitats. Their moms got into it and a whole miniature world of dens and woods became interesting and creative by gathering and placing rocks, sticks and cones.

When children have access to natural materials, they haven't changed all that much. The only difference between their play and something that could have been a hundred years ago is they didn't create the animals from sticks. It would have been no less pleasurable if they had. The 21 month old became the force of nature that revamped the structures once in awhile.

When we left, they took the habitat apart to leave the beach as they had found it.