Nature Investigation and Imagination

When walking with your child or children you can keep a few games in mind to play along the way. The games help to focus both you and your children on your surroundings. It is easy to get caught up in conversations, which, although valuable to your relationship, can move you out of the present moment. Instead of noticing where you are walking at the moment you are busy talking about going to the mall and selecting a birthday present for the child’s friend.

You can still talk, but every so often try to bring everyone’s awareness to the moment with sensory activities. The following game starts off with observation and works its ways to a (sometimes wild) imagination activity. Whether your child is a preschooler or a preteen, this word game allows kids to stretch their creativity.

One person starts this game by looking around and selecting something fairly large that is within view, such as a mountain or a tree, and says, “I see a tree.” The next person then picks something big on the tree, and says, “I see bark on the tree.” The next person has to pick a thing that’s on the bark, “I see a branch on the bark.” (If two people are playing, then you would go back-and-forth with your child.)

Participants continue in this fashion, noticing smaller and more specific details until they can no longer actually see anything to mention. Then they are free to make up details, such as, “I see a bug on the leaf,” and the next person might say, “I see a baby bug on the back of the big bug,” and so on until players can’t think of anything smaller. Move down the trail and have a different individual start another round.

Pick up that Stick!

When walking along with a group of children, you’ll almost never hear me tell children to pick up sticks. Usually, I’m trying to avert having one child accidently hitting another child with a stick so you’ll hear me say one (or ten) times, “Stick down.” Kids always want hiking sticks, which I tell them are fine if they are walking with their family but not in a group of twelve-to-fifteen individuals. I can just envision some kid tripping over someone else’s walking staff. (On occasion, when I know the kids better than those on a two-hour field trip, I have allowed hiking sticks.)

Kids can play a lot of games with small sticks, those as long as the child’s forearm from wrist to elbow. Children can pick up fallen sticks and use them to build log cabin-like structures on a clear patch of ground. Natural sticks also provide a greater challenge for a game of pick-up sticks. Kids will think it’s silly to use real sticks as Lincoln Logs or pick-up sticks.

Children can also “write” their names or words with sticks or try creating other images with an assortment of branches so to get some different colors. Place two sticks opposite one another and encourage children to pretend they are jumping over a stream, as defined by the sticks. Keep moving apart the sticks, as the child continues to challenge himself. Try other Games Played with Sticks for Indoor and Outdoor Fun. Sticks are a free toy that are a bit like the boxes that house presents … they are an open-ended toy that supports a variety of creative play opportunities.

Imagination Connections in Nature

How often do you look up at the clouds and imagine seeing dancing elephants and mice chasing tigers? If you don’t envision representations of reality in the clouds, do your children?

I have always loved looking for and finding pictures and patterns in seemingly random things. I have tried to play my cloud game with other adults while we drive along the highway and I tend to hit a resistance that I’ve never encountered with kids and young teens. After a few suggestions, adults sometimes grudgingly tell me that they can’t see what I’m seeing but then they tell me what they see in the pattern of clouds.

Try this with your kids: Look for figures within the pattern of things around you. I have seen faces in the wood grain of doors. The other day, I saw a stick that had a distinct bear-ness to its stance in spite of its skinny stick-ness. It was like an armature waiting to be fleshed out with clay.

It isn’t necessary for clouds, leaves, sticks, rock formation, shrubs, and all that stuff to look like an exact sculpture of what we imagine. In a world where we are accustomed to uniform manufactured items, a three-legged cloud dog may bother children with its imperfection (“That doesn’t look like a real dog.”) but it opens children, and the adults playing along, to curiosity and creativity.

Creativity is not black-and-white. Creativity is gray and fuzzy. It is a starting point. Even a “finished” creative piece can be a jumping off point for future endeavors. (“Next time, I’ll use pink and green together.” “Next time, I’ll add more onions to the soup.”)

This simple creative activity can help children develop problem-solving skills. They realize that they don’t have to accept something as is and that they can look for other options. Kids can learn that it is fun to look for options instead of to wipe the sweat from their brow with relief that they can find one way of doing something, even if that choice is lackluster. Children can learn to recognize patterns as their brains fill in details.

The simple and silly action of looking for faces and figures in the natural (and manmade) world doesn’t take any time, you can do it while driving (watch the road, though), walking, or doing anything else during which time you pause to look around at your surroundings with the fuzzy view that while things are what they are they can also look like other things.

If you don’t normally look for images within other objects, it may take you a while to develop this habit. As I said, this doesn’t have to be a formal activity, you and the kids can just call out the faces and figures you see when you see them. Forcing things for the sake of a game diminishes inspired observations. When someone takes an inventive view of an object, pause for a few seconds to admire their connection. It isn’t necessary to agree, disagree, or offer another point of view. Creativity isn’t about right or wrong; it is about options.

Take Your Teddy Bear for a Walk

Chances are that your kids have indoor toys and outdoor toys. However, they can liven up their outdoor play by taking some of those indoor toys outside. This may actually encourage children to play outside, particularly if they thought that the only way they could play with certain items was to do so inside.

If your child likes playing dress up, then dressing up like a fairy or a knight takes on a whole new level when the child can bestow fairy magic to the flowers in the garden or the child can sneak among the trees and shrubs in search of dragons and evildoers.

Barbie may enjoy a boating expedition down a slow-moving stream. Invite stuffed animals to a picnic under the backyard tree instead of keeping them cooped up inside waiting for high tea. Action figures may encounter more action among grass and fallen branches than they’d ever come across in the land of carpeting and dining room chair legs.

Okay, building toys like K’nex or Lego probably won’t manage grass and dirt without a number of pieces going missing. However, if your child hasn’t played with a toy for months, see if taking it outside gives the item a second life.

Work jigsaw puzzles on a piece of plywood. Draw, color, paint, or work on activity books outside at a picnic table.

Taking indoor toys outside just might spark your children’s imaginations and creativity.