Isn't it fun sometimes to just stand back and watch children playing? I've noticed with C lately that she's all about the process of doing things.
A large portion of the time when C is playing these days, she'll set up these elaborate games. For example, she'll set up an entire village of Littlest Pet Shop characters, or a massive blocks zoo complete with animals. You get the idea.
Thursday she set up this store in their room. We don't keep a lot of toys in the children's room because with 3 sharing a room, you just can't do that or stuff would be everywhere. We try to keep most of the toys upstairs in the school room, but things seem to gravitate to their room anyway. So Thursday afternoon she gathered various objects: doll clothes, baby doll bottles, books, some letters that I had made for D to practice "sewing," just tons of odds and ends. She placed them very meticulously in a line in front of their dresser. I watched her off and on and she would step back to look at things, move them around, make sure it was just how she wanted it. At one point I asked her what she was doing, and she explained that she was setting up a store. I asked if she wanted me to get D and E in case they might want to shop at the store. She answered no, that she wasn't ready yet. So I let her play.
She played for over AN HOUR! Now C doesn't do ANYTHING for an hour. But she set up this store for an hour. And then I don't know what happened after that. I think she brought her siblings a couple of bags of items from "the store," and then that was it. That evening as part of her evening chores she glady picked up the items from said store, but the store was never really played in.
I really find this phenomenon fascinating as it seems like an awful lot of work for "nothing" from my perspective. But it's obviously not "nothing" for her as it happens like this quite often. It just makes me see, yet again, how differently children are wired from adults. For me, I'm all about the outcome. But in a lot of ways, children seem to just "enjoy the ride."
I love this! It seems like a huge portion of the Polly Pocket play around here is spent in the "getting ready" stage. You're right about children "enjoying the ride."
ReplyDeleteI kind of wish I could gain that kind of perspective about cleaning my kitchen.
I've been trying to foster that type of perspective in myself, but it just doesn't work the same.
ReplyDeleteI read a blog post (will try to find it) about running and the mom mentioned how little children LOVE running and at some point we lose that joy. I'm wondering if it's the same thing with "the process"?