Count Your Blessings #81 – Girl & Cardboard Box

What do you get if you take one girl, mix it together with an ample sized cardboard box, a few pens, scissors, tape, bamboo sticks and a little help from her brother?

Answer: Fun

It was Sue’s birthday at the weekend and her present arrived (in car from Ikea) in a nice big cardboard box. The first question Emily asked me when she saw the box was “what’s in it?”. The answer was a chair for the bedroom because Mummy would like to have somewhere were she can sit and read in quiet when she wants to. The second question (which I was also expecting) was “can I have the box?”

Once we had handed the present over to Sue, and left an appropriate amount of time to look at them all, Emily set to work on the box.

Before long it had a roof supported by a couple of bamboo canes which had finished there summer work in the garden. The door that Daddy had cut into one side had been modified so that it was now in a stable door configuration. A windows and some flowers to decorate were also added.

Then the second phase of play began, the imagining play. Emily had created her own house and she was making the most of this new world.

Hours of fun.

Earlier this week the news was full of reports about a letter written to the Daily Telegraph. The letter was written by academic and professionals involved with children. One of the things this letter was calling for was:

“real play (as opposed to sedentary, screen-based entertainment)”.

Emily certainly had “real play” with her cardboard box.

I know a day is coming when she will probably no longer want to play with cardboard boxes, but I do hope that she will never lose the value of “real play”.

As an adult I sometimes think I need to rediscover the value of “real play”. Anyone else feel like that?