I spent a lot of play time outdoors as a kid - as most kids should. We had a huge back yard in the city and we played there all the time. Our back yard was of course adjacent to neighboring back yards.
One particular neighbor was elderly (most of our neighbors where older people) and had the most amazing fresh cut grass all the time. Any time we would play with the ball in the yard, we would always be cautious not to let the ball go over into their yard. They weren't the nicest people either and they never gave candy on Halloween.
So, with this experience, my brother, sister and I came up with a board game. We built it from scratch and modeled the moving pieces after the CandyLand pieces. We worked together on that game and played it all the time together.
The game was appropriately named: "Get out of my Yard". We should have sold it to Milton Bradley (do they even exist any more?)
I saw all this to highlight the ingenuity of a young child. It wasn't that we didn't have board games and it wasn't that we were board - we just created.
In my previous post, 40+ hours in 3 days::Single Parenting I briefly discussed how being a working single mom not only effects me but effects my child at the same time. Here is a excerpt from that post:
"However, one very amazing thing to note here is this: Daniel made his own match game during his independent play time. He cut out pieces of paper and drew matching pictures on the papers and flipped them over to create his own game."
I was so excited about this as not only was I proud but this was also a nostalgic experience. I shared with Daniel that I too had created my own game. I mean, how can you not be proud of ingenuity like this at such a young age?
Ugh, I just love that kid so much!