Snow Play, Imagination, and Empowerment for Kids
Did you ever do this as a kid? Stomp your way through the snow with your heels close together and your toes pointing out so the tracks you made with your boots looked like the track of a tractor?
My brother and I once walked painstakingly allllll the way up our driveway at an equal distance away from each other making our ‘tractor’ prints all the way to where the school bus picked us up. Our hopes? That we would fool Mom and Dad into thinking a tractor had come down the driveway.
Did we fool them? I dunno. I doubt it. I have a feeling my equidistant footsteps weren’t as perfect as my older brother’s. That and the fact that the tractor stopped right at the end of the front walk. And one track had size 9 shoes and the other about a size 1. Among several other tiny flaws. Like the fact that it took us a really, really long time to get to the end of the driveway and they probably saw us.
But the cackles we had at the thought of our parents being fooled into thinking a tractor had come by was fun.
Why Kids Should Pull Pranks on Adults
There is something special about being a kid and thinking you’ve pulled the wool over the eyes of an adult. It is empowering and takes a bit of a cognitive leap to create and pull off a good prank. Timing. Patience. And a bit of problem solving as well as imagining the foreseeable flaws in the ploy to fool others.
When you were a kid, what was your favourite or most memorable prank you pulled on an adult? Do your kids pull pranks on you?
The other day I was doing stuff in the living room and I turned around to see my 9-year-old had engaged in a random act of play and drawn this (see above) on the blanket we keep over our couch. Wow. Pretty cool.
Do you catch your kids at random acts of play?
This weekend, keep your eyes out for all the random moments in time you find your kids playing whether it is placing all their Shreddies in a line, drawing on the frosty car windows, walking funny, or making silly faces in the mirror when they are supposed to be brushing their teeth.
Kids naturally fall into play as it is nature’s way of teaching them about the world (as well as relaxing them). Drawing the girl in the photo above, my daughter learned about texture, the grain of the material she was working with, space, dimensions, and more. For her, she was just having fun.
Playing is fun. Playing is learning. Play makes learning fun.
Sometimes we get wrapped up in the ‘shoulds’ of learning and play. As adults we like to try and impose structure and schedules and our thoughts about play on our kids. That’s a natural tendency for us, but it isn’t the way kids learn naturally. They learn best through unstructured play which has freedom and flexibility. It doesn’t have rules or structure or time limits. For example, above, my daughter used her finger on a blanket. Voila. A moment of unstructured play. If I had tried to teach her all the things she innately absorbed in her moment of random play, it would have taken me ages to prepare. It would have bored her most likely, and it wouldn’t have been meaningful for her.
Does she remember making this drawing? Only because she saw me take a picture of it. But does her brain remember what she learned while drawing? You betcha. She connected neurons. She had fireworks going off in her brain as she took this self-discovery, self-initiated play in different directions. Heck, there was even some problem solving mixed in here when she discovered moving her finger one way erased the line she was trying to form!
So, while we may get frustrated when kids drag their feet, remember that there is a lot going on in that growing brain and that your child is learning a lot about the world around them.
Relax, let them play. Value it. Cherish it. And: If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
Question: What have you caught your kids playing at lately? Have there been any random acts of play? Watch for them. Maybe even instigate one or two as well!
Enjoy!
It’s an easy answer, but one that might surprise you. (As well as save you some mullah, mullah, mullah.)
The answer: Unscripted toys.
Say what?
What are Unscripted Toys?
Unscripted toys are toys that are not licensed. They don’t match up with a movie. Or a video game. Or a book. Or bedding. Think… building blocks and simple toys like that. Toys that don’t come with a predetermined story. These toys can be props for many different kinds of play. They can be almost anything.
For example, a scripted toy would be a lovely magic wand you picked up at the toy store. An unscripted toy would be the amazing stick your kid found in the backyard. When your kids play with a magic wand–what is it? Chances are 9 times out of 10 it is a magic wand. Now think about when you kid plays with a stick. It’s rarely the same thing twice. It’s unscripted. It doesn’t have a predetermined ‘this is it’ attached to it. Sticks can be a magic wand, but they can also be canes, guns, limbo rods, something to poke with, something to float in the river, swords, scepters, digging devices, and so much more.
Another example of an unscripted toy would be blocks. Few children have blocks these days, however, according to Parenting Science: “complex block-play is linked with advanced math skills in later life.” Playing with unscripted toys such as blocks promotes language skills, imagination, creative thinking, and even math and spatial skills. (Ever tried making a freehand Lego plane without any spatial skills?)
And yeah, it’s true that few kids scream and go “OHMIGOD, you got me blocks! You are the best mom EVER!” when they unwrap an unscripted toy from under the tree. (The marketers of scripted and licensed toys sure know what they are doing, that’s for sure!) But think about those building blocks. What are they? What can they become? How many different uses can they have? (Ours have been everything from towers for knocking over to playgrounds and complex houses for Littlest Pet Shops to roads for toy cars.) Blocks are a toy that will grow with the kids and won’t require you to spend another $200 so your kids can enjoy the full building block experience and play out the whole building block story. It’s simple. It’s healthy. It’s fun!
Scripted Toys vs. Unscripted Toys: The Case of Barbie
When I started thinking about scripted toys, I thought about Barbie. She’s an interesting chick. She can be both scripted and unscripted.
An example of unscripted would be the nothing-special Barbie you get for less than $10. Scripted Barbie is generally over $30 such as my daughter’s Muskateer Barbie. Muskateer Barbie is based on the Barbie movie, Barbie and the Three Muskateers.
When my daughter plays Barbies, Muskateer Barbie always Muskateer Barbie. Why? Because she came with a script. A script that says she rescues people and dares to believe in herself. (Not a bad script.) Muskateer Barbie rides a horse and my daughter (she saw the movie before getting the Barbie–marketer’s paradise, hello!) believed she needed a horse to fully play out the script of Muskateer Barbie. A Kleenex box car wouldn’t do for her! No way. She couldn’t ride the leopard teddy bear like the other Barbies because it wasn’t part of the script. And unlike Miss Whatever-Nothing-Special Barbie, Muskateer Barbie was not the star in zillions of scripts ranging from Rapunzel, Island Princess, Rock Star, Mother, Mean Girl, or Fairy. Nope. She was a one-way-to-play only kind of gal.
Why is this?
Because of the script surrounding the Barbie. It limited my daughter’s perception of what this Barbie could be and what sort of adventures she could have.
Think of the average Lego kit you see in stores these days. They usually have something to do with some blockbuster movie, don’t they? (Thinking of Pirates of the Caribbean and Star Wars off the top of my head.) Kids collect these kits. They build them as per the directions using no creativity, imagination, and with limited problem solving. They play with the Lego set in the way the script (preordained by adults, I might add) and in that one way. Then it sits on their shelf. They don’t take them apart and make them a million and one other things like we used to with those random ‘uncool’ kits you rarely see kids with these days.
If you take a look down most toy aisles you are going to see that 80% or more of the toys are licensed, scripted toys. In other words they are part of some larger story some brilliant marketers have dreamed up.
Is this bad?
Yes, and no. If you want to keep buying lots of toys to ‘satisfy the need to fill the script’ then go for it. Sometimes those scripts can be a jumping off point for other, powerful, imaginative play. (My daughter and her friends played Muskateers for many recesses during the Muskateer Barbie phase and focused on being strong, powerful, confident girls who had the resources to save the prince. I liked that. It was a good phase and that script talked to them about empowerment that I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish.)
However, if you want toys that are going to last your kids through something longer than a week to a month long phase and want to build some problem solving, creativity, and math skills (hello, blocks), as well as let your kids out of the mold for a bit, then consider putting a few things under the tree this year that might include these unscripted toys:
Unscripted Toys To Put Under the Tree
- Craft kits–open ended with beads, string, stickers, glue, paper, etc., so kids can make WHATEVER they want and in whatever combination suits their fancy. You may find it is easier to make up a kit like this on your own as most kits are designed for kids to make one thing, and one thing only.
- Art supplies. Lots and lots of it!
- Playdough! (Or make your own. Great stocking stuffer. Click here for my easy and cheap homemade playdough recipe.)
- Lego–non kit kind. (Get the little Lego people too. Kids LOVE the people and they are the basis of many creative adventures!)
- Animal figurines. Dinosaurs, farm animals, wild animals, you name it, go for it!
- Barbies and action dolls that don’t have to do with a script. (Regular old $4 Barbie vs $30 Special Movie Princess Barbie.)
- Toys with no batteries. Toys with batteries that make the sounds for the kids replaces the desire for them to make those sounds themselves. For example, those robot dogs, while seemingly cool, lose their appeal in about 5 minutes because there in only one way to play with them and that way gets really boring, really fast. You don’t even make the noise for the dog and determine its moods. Bummer, dude.
- Any toys that you feel could become a million and one things.
- Balls
- Balloons–the more the better. Have a balloon fest! (For our 2-year-old we once filled a room with balloons. Er, I mean Santa did. She spent HOURS in there playing. Best $2 we ever spent.)
- Blocks (Of course)
- Dress up clothes that are versatile. (A fancy dress that isn’t something specific like a licensed Disney Sleeping Beauty princess dress so it can be worn in many different ‘fancy dress’ adventures.)
- A puppy. A real one.
In other words, try to avoid some of the toys that are part of a larger merchandising scheme. Hand your kids a couple of unscripted toys this Christmas and sit back and watch. At first your kids might ignore them for the shiny well-marketed toys or be at a loss on what to do with these ‘open-ended’ toys. You may find to initiate play you may have to get down and play with them for a few minutes. Then sit back and watch some free play take off!
How about you? What do you think about scripted toys? Are there some unscripted toys that have been a real hit in your world?
How to Break the Rules
First of all, you need to decide what rules you have. This was actually kind of a tough one for me. There are rules all over the place. Social norms, cultural norms, gender norms, family norms, family rules, and more. But what rules do we have that feel like “rules” and can actually be broken? Safely.
I vote we smash rules of all forms and varieties when we tackle this challenge. And that could look like one or all of these:
- Putting your baby girl in a blue sleeper. (No need to leave the babies out of this challenge.)
- Let your little boy try out pigtails.
- Let the kids make a fort in the main room using the bedding off their beds and the couch cushions and the flashlights and the… and let them leave it there. All day.
- Jump on the beds!
- Pig out.
- Watch too much television.
- Instead of cleaning bedrooms before bed, make a bigger mess!
- Draw on the sidewalks. (Some communities have actually made this illegal!! Try Googling it. It’s shocking!)
- Talk with your mouth full of food.
- Play the music too loud.
- Indoor waterfight.
- Blow bubbles in the living room.
- Eat Jell-O powder.
- Walk on the furniture.
- Let the kids romp through the shredded paper before you take it to the recycle depot.
- Players choice–what rule do your kids want to break? How about you? What do you want to do?
Sounds like an interesting day, doesn’t it?
The biggest thing, I think, about breaking the rules is this: if the kids break a rule, it shouldn’t become more work for you. If the kids are responsible for cleaning their rooms and they decide not to make their bed or clean their rooms for Breaking a Rule, it shouldn’t mean that you have to run in there and clean it for them. That’s half the thing. If they break the run in the house rule and accidentally smash something–they have to fix it.
It’s not a scott free day. There are still real life consequences.
Stay tuned. On Friday I’m going to share one big rule kids love to break along with a million fun ways to do it! (Okay, maybe not a million.)
How about you? Have you and your kids broken any rules this week? Give it a shot and report back in the comment section below.
