Play time

water

I've been enjoying watching Amelia play, and have plenty of time to do it. Unstructured time when she can watch water pour from a cup again and again and again, or see how digging in the dirt with a twist-tie or face-cloth works, or standing in our side-yard off the kitchen and yelling to see how the echos bounce off the walls of the houses and garages around us. Anouther favourite activity when it's too wet or cold to be outside has been to get up and down into her little chair and read books to herself there. She is becoming more and more self-entertaining and is happy to spend time alone doing these activities.

A friend sent me this article about how children's time has become more and more scheduled and busy. It's a very interesting article, a bit of a long read, but there are some interesting points beyond the loss of time for children to be children. How the amount of activities a child is enrolled in has become a status symbol for the parents. We're not at that stage yet, but I think that most of the parents in my 'circle' will not be drawn into this spiral and our children can go looking for bugs and frogs together or play house or sell lemonade for hours together...and even *gasp* be bored sometimes! (I think there will be some organized activity, but I want to keep it to a minimum.)