Not all of the toys and games your child plays needs to be bought at a store.
When I was a kid lots of families didn’t have much disposable income so store-bought toys were a luxury, not a given.
But we didn’t mind – we just made our own toys and games.
We’d throw an inexpensive hula hoop on the ground and take turns seeing who could get their rocks inside or closest to the hoop.
At Christmas time we had tons of fun using the empty wrapping paper rolls for sword fights and other pretend play.
Since we had a large yard, most of the neighbors came to our house to play and we would enjoy games such as dodgeball and Red Rover.
And we loved staging all kinds of dramatic play from being pirates looking for treasure, to building forts using snow in the winter and cardboard boxes in the summer.
Or we’d make our own bean bags simply taking scraps of cloth, filling them with rice or beans, taping or pinning them shut.
And then we’d use them to knock down cans we’d set up on fences or stumps.
And then there were times we’d turn our backyard into a pretend jungle.
We’d take plastic peanut butter jars, poke holes in the lids and then go see what little creatures we could capture and bring back to our jungle!
For water play fun, even the kids whose parents didn’t allow them to play with squirt guns joined in the fun by filling cans and buckets with water and chasing each other around.
And since we always had balloons in the house, filling them up and having balloon water fights was easy and great fun!
And everyone always wanted a turn with the Big Kahuna itself…the much sought after garden hose!
When somebody else got a hold of that baby, you knew you had to skedaddle or end up soaking wet!
So even without many store-bought toys we still managed to make our own toys and games and had tons of fun with them outside, no matter what the weather was like.
While buying outdoor toys and play equipment for your child is awesome, it’s also good to simply provide them with a few raw materials and allow them to make their own outdoor toys.
You’ll be amazed at the things they come up with!
Photo credits: Anders.