Kids Have the BEST Imaginations
While I was growing up my siblings and I used to think of ways to pass the time. My parents were big believers that kids needed to be active instead of planting themselves in front of a T.V. all day. With so many "boring" moments without the television, we decided to entertain ourselves! Here are a few of the things we did:
Put on plays
Pretended to be on T.V.
Built clubhouses outside/inside
Made stuff out of mud like pies, bowls, dice, and dirt clods
Insanely fast bike races
Dress-ups (even my brothers got into this)
Made our own cassette tapes (sang music and recorded it)
Made anything you could think of with a cardboard box
Out of everything that we did my absolute favorite (and my kid's favorite) was anything that had to do with pillows and blankets. Here is the list of what we came up with:
forts/tents,
swimming pools
stuffed burritos with an actual human "bean" inside
played "hot lava" where you could step on the blanket or pillow but not the carpet because you would be "burned" and you would be out of the game
sat on the blanket and had someone pull you around on a smooth surface
pillow fights
a cape
wrapped the blankets around each hand and then you have really big boxing gloves
a curtain/door
rolled the blankets long ways so we would have a bunch of "snakes"
made a huge fluffy bed with all the blankets and pillows to see who could stay on the longest without falling off
Life gets busy sometimes which makes it is easy to forget how simple kids' needs really are. You don't need to buy the biggest and best thing on the market for your kids to be entertained. If you are an adult reading this, I am sure you can remember doing these sorts of things as a child. I believe it is our responsibility as the next generation of parents to pass the whimsy of childhood onto them. Our kid's won't have these fun moments unless we are there doing it with them. Go build a swimming pool and don't forget to do it with your kids.