Toys Should Grow One’s Imagination
I have a theory that is supported by many parents I know, and it is this: Children would rather play with cardboard boxes and pots and pans than with the latest highly-marketed, batteries-not-included, Toys-R-Us contraption. My husband reminisces about the time he made an army rifle out of a broom, duct-tape, and a flashlight whilst trudging back and forth in a trench he dug in his parents’ back yard. And the new GI Joe heroes he created by taking apart old GI Joe figurines and reassembling their body parts. Children like and NEED to use their imaginations. So why not cultivate your child’s budding creativity with something like this felt book? You could purchase it, or even better, make your own.
2 Responses to “Toys Should Grow One’s Imagination”
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Crystal Keilers
Cute! And I agree, kids don’t use their imagination, I think it’s because TV has become the electronic babysitter. Sad.
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Mama Dalton
We still have all the body parts–truth be told, they didn’t all get put back together. I’m not quite sure what to do with them. They look rather forlorn. Ahhh, the memories you know. He also made hinges out of the legs of the LEGO people for the LEGO houses so that he could have windows that would open!! How’s that for imagination!!
I also remember our daughter having a perfectly good ‘kitchen’ made of those self same cardboard boxes of appropriate heights that ‘grew’ with her, circles for the kid-sized pots and pans on the ‘stove,’ a hole cut out with a smallish wash pan in it for the sink, and one larger rectangular box with two smaller ones stacked on top of each other inside (for the shelves), which served as a dandy fridge. No plastic for her!!
And we also had another cardboard box–it was called the Rainy Day Box–and it was filled with STUFF. We had crayons, construction paper, cloth bits, glue, pipe cleaners, markers, white doilies (remember those?), glitter (!), anything and everything to make OTHER stuff become something beautiful. One never had to ask “What can I do?” There was always the Rainy Day Box. It was amazing what things came out of that box! (As well as what she thought should go into it! She was the one that always came home with the dead bugs!)
Sometimes, no, most times I suspect, it is the imagination of the parents that gives rise to that of the children. But, some kids will take flight all by themselves if they are given half the chance. And especially if given the two things that give them the best shot: parents who show them by example a love of reading, and show them by example that TV does not rule their lives. The one will let them create their own worlds in the colors and beauty and innocence as it should be; if allowed to fill their lives with the other, it will suck those same things out of their souls.
Thanks for the memories!