|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Magpie
Immortal
Jun 29 2014, 4:49pm
Post #1 of 19
(210 views)
Shortcut
|
|
In celebration of summer* : playing outside without toys
|
Can't Post
|
|
*(for those in the northern hemisphere)
It's coming up on Fourth of July which is the 'representative' height of summer for many of us. It is, in some ways, a celebration of summer as much as a political/patriotic event.
That, combined with the recent garden discussion on pollantir had me reminiscing about my childhood and playing outside. (in the yard, I'll have you know! lol)
My Dad purchased two lots for our house. So one lot had the house and the other lot was divided into half garden and half play space. And he did have a garden (as opposed to my urban pot of tomatoes). Food grows well in Michigan and we always had a large garden of strawbs, beans, tomatoes, peppers, spinach, chard, cucumbers, and muskmelon.
But we had a huge area for playing and the periphery was lined with mostly wild, rambling roses and honeysuckle bushes. We had a few pieces of play equipment, some yard games (badminton, croquet)... but mostly we just ran wild in the yard.
Here's what I'm wondering... what did you all do when you ran wild in the yard... or the nearby park or woods or fields or meadows... when you relied on nature to amuse you? And what nature-based activities could you recommend to our mothers of small(ish) children.
I can remember pulling honeysuckle blooms off the bush and extracting the stamen from the back of the bloom which would emerge with one drop of sweet nectar on the head (anther). Blades of grass could be split and used to create a whistle (although I wasn't very good at it). I liked to look for four leaf clovers and could find them pretty easily.
We were always catching bugs and putting them in jars for an afternoon. Our grasshoppers could get enormous in the late summer. We had lots of katydids, too. In the evening, we'd chase and catch fireflies. Sometimes we'd find a cocoon and bring it in to see what hatched out.
We liked to pull apart and reconnect horsetail stems and open up seeds and see what they looked like inside. Spent dandelion blossoms and milk weed pods were for blowing. And daisy petals were for "he loves me, he loves me not."
We were always cracking open rocks. I thought we'd find diamonds inside or something, I don't know! But we lived next to a parking lot covered with some crushed stone and it had a lot of fossils and fools gold in the rock. We could *always* find something interesting in the rocks there.
We had a wild area at the end of our street with a large willow tree. We spent many summer days under the willow. The branches came down to the ground and it was pleasantly mossy underneath. Sometimes we'd tie the willow branches into a swing for swinging on.
Sometimes, we laid on our backs and found pictures in the clouds.
With a little additional equipment, we played kickball (for us, basically baseball with a big ball you kicked instead of hitting a ball with a bat), hopscotch, and marbles.
I like urban/city life but I was always a little regretful my kids didn't have this same sort of play experience. We had the yard and with nearby friends, they could run from yard to yard. But there was no honeysuckle sipping or sitting under willow trees. We did float boats down the alley one spring when the thaw came quickly and a running stream got created as the snow melted. And we often went outdoors to sky watch whenever the clouds got interesting.
What did/do you and/or your kids do outside when it's just you and the great outdoors? How do/did you amuse yourselves? Do you know some good activities you could suggest that involve nature?
For example, one year I made all my Morris dance friends hankies with fern leaves imprints pounded into them. You can do the same with pillowcases. Different leaves and flowers get pounded into the cloth or paper and they leave a colored imprint. Some work better than others.
Or we'd take still soft, colored leaves in the autumn and my mom would iron them between two sheets of waxed paper to 'preserve 'them. Then we'd hang them in the window.
LOTR soundtrack website ~ magpie avatar gallery
TORn History Mathom-house ~ Torn Image Posting Guide
|
|
|
Elarie
Grey Havens
Jun 29 2014, 9:03pm
Post #2 of 19
(115 views)
Shortcut
|
|
Gosh, you're bringing back lots of memories
[In reply to]
|
Can't Post
|
|
It seems we had very similar childhoods, except that I grew up on a farm and our play space included pastures, woods, fields and, of course, the barn. We did most of the things you've mentioned, and also had little creeks to play in, building dams and catching crawfish. Playing 'war' and 'cowboys and Indians' with sticks for guns and bows was also pretty popular, and smashing up different colors of sandstone rocks, mixing them with water and making "war paint" for our faces was another cheap pastime.
I remember that we had a treehouse at one point, up in a walnut tree, and we all had bicycles to ride, and my oldest brother had a chemistry set that could make gunpowder and blow things up (I still have the old sideboard that he used as his worktable in the basement, complete with holes and burn marks - it's now my entertainment center).
And of course, walking the beams in the barn was a rite of passage that every kid went through, starting with 'scooching' across sitting down with a leg on each side, then walking across while holding someone's hand, and finally doing that first solo walk while everyone watched. We even had a "wobbly" beam that was the ultimate test.
I've often wondered, what do city kids DO all summer?
And once again the world has not arranged itself just for me.
|
|
|
Cirashala
Valinor
Jun 29 2014, 9:19pm
Post #3 of 19
(114 views)
Shortcut
|
And Elarie too!
That has given me a few ideas of how to get outside with the girls I love playing on farms- barns, pastures, etc. I also love playing by rivers and creeks (though I won't likely do outdoor water fun until the girls at least know how to swim for safety reasons).
We don't have a barn yet, but we have some wild parks around here (wild as in natural, not manicured aside from a path). We went down one last Wednesday (until the hand/foot/mouth left us housebound, as it's highly contagious  ). The girls gathered an assortment of wildflowers, leaves, pinecones, and a pretty stick (well, my five year old thought it was pretty, but I was at least happy to note that there weren't a lot of splintery edges) for their "treasure", which they then gave to Daddy when he got home
When I can get a smaller stroller, and the girls are all better, we plan on taking them to Tubb's Hill, which is almost a small mountain that sits next to the lake here. It's covered in trails, and not only is it a great hike and exercise (it's steep in parts, walkable but steep), but it's pretty natural also, and affords great views of the lake We just can't take our big stroller up there (it's the kind that the infant carseat used to snap into, and we haven't gotten a small light and easily portable one yet). The big stroller can't handle the narrow paths, and I'm not sure my two year old could keep up with us for very long, plus I don't want her getting too close to the edges that have small cliffs dropping straight down to the water  .
I would love to be able to find a farm that has horse riding for the public, as I LOVE to ride, have ridden whenever visiting aunts since I was five, and the girls want to learn. But though we are surrounded by farms, we haven't found one as of yet that does that, other than a therapy one, but since they're not in therapy they can't do it . And we fully intend to visit the local pumpkin patch (which is a very large you pick farm) again this fall and do the hayride behind the tractor there
As for the fourth, well, that really depends on whether they're well or not, because we'd be cutting it quite close, but my aunt and uncle in law are hosting a party at one of the city parks (the manicured kind, though there are pine trees in it) and my in laws do fireworks and sparklers at their house when the sun starts getting low My retail husband actually has it off for once, so fingers crossed the girls are better by then! Otherwise I might cry....
|
|
|
entmaiden
Forum Admin
/ Moderator
Jun 29 2014, 11:02pm
Post #4 of 19
(103 views)
Shortcut
|
|
Kickball, hide and seek, capture the flag, even tennis
[In reply to]
|
Can't Post
|
|
From the time I was nine, and the youngest two were three, we lived on a cul-de-sac with lots of kids. Two of the dads put up a couple of posts and we hooked up a volleyball net to play "tennis" in the evenings. We often had a mix of kids, dogs and parents on each side, and we never kept score, but we had a lot of fun. Our cul-de-sac was perfect for playing kickball, and since our street backed up to the city park system, we could have very successful games of hide-and-seek.
We captured lightning bugs (some of you might call them fireflies) in jars with a couple blades of grass. We loved watching them light up in our jars as the sky grew darker.
Our street had a Fourth of July parade, which meant you decorated your bicycle or tricycle wit crepe paper and flags and pedaled down the street, sometimes with your dog in a wagon that was also decorated. We followed that with cookouts.
My grandfather lived outside the city with a big willow tree and an untamed field of blackberries across the street. We would take our little buckets into the scratchy bushes and often ate more than we gathered, but nothing tasted so good as those sticky, runny blackberries. We played house under the willow, and cut off swishy branches and played cheerleader. Our grandparents house gave us endless possibilities for fun - rolling down the hill, coaxing the next-door horses to come close enough to pet, rides behind Grandpa's tractor.
For two weeks every year, we rented a cottage in Western Michigan and spent every day in the sand and the waters of Lake Michigan. That was the highlight of the summer, and to this day I look forward to spending time on the lake.
|
|
|
Dame Ioreth
Tol Eressea
Jun 29 2014, 11:27pm
Post #5 of 19
(101 views)
Shortcut
|
to "harvest" the few over-ripe veggies in the garden. Then I'd "cook" with them. I got in so much trouble once for bringing my grandma's good frying pan outside and leaving it there when it started to rain. I'd use wild chicory to make "coffee", I'd grind up any kind of seeds I could get and make "bread", I'd make all kinds of veggie stews... I had loads of fun.
I used to go out in the afternoon armed with a salt shaker and sit and eat tomatoes and green beans. oh man... the best thing in the world is a sun-warmed tomato straight off the vine.
We used to ramble all over the farmer's field in back of my grandpa's house with all kinds of stuff that the plow would turn up. Pottery bits, clay pipes... it was there that I got my love of archeology. There was a very shallow creek and we used to take jars with us to catch polywogs and then later in the summer, bull frogs. We built a small cave inside a huge viburnum bush in the back yard. I think I got in trouble there too... I brought my pillow out and it got soaked...
Where there's life there's hope, and need of vittles.
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
|
|
|
Ethel Duath
Half-elven
Jun 30 2014, 1:12am
Post #6 of 19
(96 views)
Shortcut
|
|
We climbed trees, fences, ropes hanging from trees, played tag,
[In reply to]
|
Can't Post
|
|
and did lots of "make-believe" with role playing. Some of this needed "props" like toy swords, but often it was just us and our imagination, and trees and bushes. Sometimes I would try to weave placemats out of grass. And sticks were guns, swords, and just general props. We also would range through the neighborhood, sometimes climbing neighbors' mulberry or apple trees for a surreptitious snack.
Once my best friend and I, having seen Don Quixote (we were maybe 11 and didn't grasp the, ahem, "bad stuff") spent some time one afternoon filling a bucket from the hose, and then plopping it upside down on our heads loudly intoning, "Oh, the golden helmet of Mambrino!"
|
|
|
Ethel Duath
Half-elven
Jun 30 2014, 1:15am
Post #7 of 19
(98 views)
Shortcut
|
Of course, this was a Midwestern city where neighborhoods were basically like suburbs today. Lots of big yards and trees. We'd just climb over fences and keep going, yard to yard when possible.
Oh, and we had tons of wild apple trees in many yards. I forgot about the rotten apple fights (smelled like old cider . . .).
(This post was edited by Ethel Duath on Jun 30 2014, 1:19am)
|
|
|
Ethel Duath
Half-elven
Jun 30 2014, 1:23am
Post #8 of 19
(96 views)
Shortcut
|
|
Yes, cloud shapes! My Dad was a master
[In reply to]
|
Can't Post
|
|
of seeing shapes in almost anything in nature--clouds, rocks, trees. We'd be walking or driving somewhere, and he's say "do you see the face? Or the battle ship? Or . . ."
|
|
|
Ataahua
Forum Admin
/ Moderator
Jun 30 2014, 1:32am
Post #9 of 19
(98 views)
Shortcut
|
We had mature trees on the border of our property, and over the fence was scrubland then a few horse paddocks (with a swamp and a creek). When we weren't building huts in trees, beneath trees, under beds (on rainy days) or digging them out of the ground (until mum and dad found out and the hut had to be filled back in), we'd just get lost in the scrubland, muck about in the swamp (literally), pretend we were riding horses in the horse paddocks and other fun and slightly bonkers things.
We'd also play one-two-three-home or hide-and-seek - although I became wary of hide-and-seek after the second time of just being left while I was hiding. I thought I was great at the game, but all the while my siblings were inside watching TV.
Celebrimbor: "Pretty rings..."
Dwarves: "Pretty rings..."
Men: "Pretty rings..."
Sauron: "Mine's better."
"Ah, how ironic, the addictive qualities of Sauron’s master weapon led to its own destruction. Which just goes to show, kids - if you want two small and noble souls to succeed on a mission of dire importance... send an evil-minded beggar with them too." - Gandalf's Diaries, final par, by Ufthak.
Ataahua's stories
|
|
|
Cirashala
Valinor
Jun 30 2014, 3:55am
Post #10 of 19
(90 views)
Shortcut
|
|
I have a fun capture the flag story :)
[In reply to]
|
Can't Post
|
|
My sister and I went on a "low gear" church youth group camping trip. The idea was that it was real camping- 7 mile hike in, tents, sleeping bags, playing in the lake, shampooing in the waterfall in our swimsuits, etc. Though some of the girls were found to have snuck in battery operated hair curlers and makeup 
Anyway, we did an after dark capture the flag with glow sticks one of the two nights we spent out there. One of the kids thought he was a genius and hid his under his shirt so he wouldn't be found out- aka cheated. He tripped and fell and the glowstick broke! His entire t-shirt was glowing after that lol. Needless to say, there was no way he could hide the evidence after that point!
I have no idea how long it took to wear off, but he was still glowing when we left, IIRC
|
|
|
sherlock
Gondor
Jun 30 2014, 10:34am
Post #11 of 19
(78 views)
Shortcut
|
plus holding the little butter cup flowers under your chin to see if you liked butter, exploring the woods, playing war and riding bikes with friends and building forts in the woods.
|
|
|
Elberbeth
Tol Eressea
Jun 30 2014, 3:27pm
Post #13 of 19
(72 views)
Shortcut
|
tree forts, catching tadpoles and newts, burning our initials into wood with magnifying glasses, playing with pet chickens, picking berries, cloud watching, horseback riding and all the rest. In the summer we slept outside, unless it was raining, with sleeping bags and air mattresses, watching for shooting stars until we fell asleep. Our parents bought a parcel of land on a nearby island when I was about 10, and my sister and I would get up early, grab something to eat and head out. We sometimes went to the woods, just running and jumping and exploring; sometimes we went to the beach, which was always at low tide in the mornings, looking for shells, digging for clams, exploring tide pools, or fishing from the rocks, rarely catching anything but having a blast. Mum never worried about us, we showed up when we were hungry. Never got hurt, unless you counted the odd wasp sting.
Weren't summers wonderful! We spent almost no time indoors, and slept soundly too.
"There are some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even though the end may be dark."
|
|
|
Alassëa Eruvande
Valinor
Jun 30 2014, 5:36pm
Post #14 of 19
(82 views)
Shortcut
|
I grew up on a 500 acre cattle ranch, and we leased an adjoining 250 acres. It would be easier to list what my brothers and I didn't do outside.
We had a creek, stock tanks, sandy soil, trees, barns, a swampy tank (amazing in South Texas, but it was at the bottom of a natural drain), fishing, crawdads, bugs, wildlife galore, horses and cattle, chickens.
We had a game where we pretended we were wildlife scientists and we'd capture chickens and put a tag on their legs. The tags were little metal tags that came off of rose bushes, to identify the rose. They had light weight wire and we just twisted the wire loosely around the chicken's leg.
We also had a game where we made little bug prisons. They were just mounds of damp soil that would stick together pretty well. We'd hollow out a "room" at the base, and put a bug in it. Then, we'd break off the tines of a plastic fork to use as the bars of the jail. We'd leave the bugs in there overnight, but by morning there had always been a jail break.
The thing that amazes me today, though, is that we ran a good portion of that ground barefoot. In the midst of sticker-burrs, cockle-burrs, mesquite thorns, stinging nettles, agarita, turkey pear, prickly pear, any number of other cactus species, catclaw, red ants, fire ants, scorpions, and rattlesnakes. As one of my Yankee cousins says, everything in Texas bites, stings, or pokes. You learn in a hurry which things do.
We never really did anything special for July 4th. My mother didn't like wasting money on fireworks, and we had a dog that was panicky-afraid of loud noises. Our town didn't put on a parade or anything, I'm guessing because it is too darn hot in South Texas in July. Plus, the annual town celebration was in August, which is also freakin' hot.
I am SMAUG! I kill when I wish! I am strong, strong, STRONG!
My armor is like tenfold shields! My teeth like swords! My claws, spears!
The shock of my tail, a thunderbolt! My wings, a hurricane! And my breath, death!
|
|
|
Dame Ioreth
Tol Eressea
Jun 30 2014, 8:53pm
Post #15 of 19
(60 views)
Shortcut
|
|
We used to make "daisy chains" with buttercups.//
[In reply to]
|
Can't Post
|
|
Where there's life there's hope, and need of vittles.
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
|
|
|
Aunt Dora Baggins
Immortal
Jun 30 2014, 9:32pm
Post #16 of 19
(66 views)
Shortcut
|
|
"The girls put mud and grass in our tent"
[In reply to]
|
Can't Post
|
|
We spent a lot of time playing outdoors in what was then a vacant field and an irrigation ditch, though it's all houses now. I had a memory pop in my head: We had built tents out of blankets, using the fence as a tentpole. There were cows in the field, so us girls gathered up some manure and put it in the boys' tent. I don't remember why; just because it was funny, I suppose. The boys complained to my dad that "the girls put mud and grass in our tent." Dad asked us if we'd done that, and we replied, quite truthfully, "Nooooo." :-D
Not that I recommend that as an activity. I remember spending a lot of time happily alone, catching crawdads and snakes in the ditch, climbing trees, and living in the world of imagination. I used to pretend that our house was a ship, and the grass was the sea, and the sidewalks were islands. I would pin sheets of paper to my back for wings and "fly". And I invented a country called "Yoohooland", where you could get anything you wanted by just calling "Yoohoo!" The thing would be invisible and intangible, but still real, not imaginary. I had a Yoohooland horse for a while.
There were lots of kids my age in the neighborhood, and we played a lot of games like Red Rover and Hide and Seek and variations of Hide and Seek like Day Bat (where you had to hide off the ground) and Green Witch (always played in the dark). We'd also play jump rope, and a game where you put two ropes down parallel and jumped over them, and kept moving them farther and farther apart to see who could jump the widest "river". I almost believed for a while that if I kept practicing, eventually I would be able to jump far enough that I could fly.
We caught lots of bugs, but Mom wouldn't let us keep butterflies, because of a song we had on a record: "It has but a few days to see the world, it is so short a time since its wings unfurled. Give it a chance to flutter and dance, a few happy hours to sit at the flowers...." We'd pull apart the stems of cattails and chew on the pith, which a neighbor girl called 'Indian gum'. And we loved to pull up the reeds in the ditch to hear them make a lovely farting noise. We called them "pooters" and thought it was hilarious. I remember drinking from honeysuckles too.
We had a "dirt pile", like a big sandbox, where we could dig and play with toy trucks and things. Dad made us fill in the holes every night, though.
We were lucky enough to live where there was lots of construction going on, so we'd raid the construction dumps for lumber and nails and make stuff, including a "hut" made entirely by the neighborhood kids. It was three stories high and had a working bathroom (OK, a pipe that ran into the ditch. It was really only practical for the boys.) I made all kinds of toys from that lumber; airplanes and horses are the ones I remember.
We also got drywall from the construction dumps, which we used as sidewalk chalk. A fun game was to draw a big blueprint floorplan of a house on the driveway and use it for a playhouse.
My dad made us stilts out of wood and we spent a lot of time walking on those.
I really had a wonderful outdoor childhood, in spite of my bookish ways. Thanks for bringing back some great memories!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"For DORA BAGGINS in memory of a LONG correspondence, with love from Bilbo; on a large wastebasket. Dora was Drogo's sister, and the eldest surviving female relative of Bilbo and Frodo; she was ninety-nine, and had written reams of good advice for more than half a century."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"A Chance Meeting at Rivendell" and other stories
leleni at hotmail dot com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(This post was edited by Aunt Dora Baggins on Jun 30 2014, 9:35pm)
|
|
|
Aunt Dora Baggins
Immortal
Jun 30 2014, 9:35pm
Post #17 of 19
(58 views)
Shortcut
|
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"For DORA BAGGINS in memory of a LONG correspondence, with love from Bilbo; on a large wastebasket. Dora was Drogo's sister, and the eldest surviving female relative of Bilbo and Frodo; she was ninety-nine, and had written reams of good advice for more than half a century."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"A Chance Meeting at Rivendell" and other stories
leleni at hotmail dot com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
|
|
|
sherlock
Gondor
Jul 1 2014, 5:25pm
Post #19 of 19
(54 views)
Shortcut
|
|
Also, I lived near a creek and
[In reply to]
|
Can't Post
|
|
in summer we would swing out over it on a rope tied to a tree and then let go and splash in the water. In the winter we ice skated on the creek. It was called Back Creek and when I was a kid I thought that was a joke name but it was really Back Creek.
|
|
|
|
|
