Make Your Own Fun
by Nowen N. Particular

The Children of Boomtown

In Boomtown, parents don’t buy their kids expensive toys. Grandparents don’t overindulge their grandchildren with fancy gadgets. The stores in town don’t carry high-priced electronic entertainment or game systems. In Boomtown, the kids make their own fun.

Almost from the day a boy learns how to walk, he’s learning how to tie knots, how to make kites, how to fish, how to camp, how to climb trees, and how to make a snow fort. The girls are learning how to cook, how to sew, how to jump rope, how to run, and how to swim. They all learn how to use scissors, how to cut with a saw, how to drill holes, how to glue things together, how to measure, how to draw up plans, how to read maps, how to make musical instruments, how to make things with string and clay and paper and wood. They learn how to work hard and they learn how to play hard.

These aren’t kids who need someone to buy an expensive toy so they won’t be bored. They can’t possibly be bored. They’ve got too much to do.

The kids in Boomtown aren’t fat and pale and lazy. They spend almost their entire summer outdoors, from early in the morning until late at night, making fun with their friends. There are races to run, bikes to ride, rivers to swim, baseball games to be played, soccer and basketball and four square and football and tennis and badmitton and crouquet. They’re hiking in the hills, walking into town, riding horses and bicycles, running and climbing and jumping and playing.

During the school year, their teachers involve them in as much kinetic activity as possible. Almost every class project is “hands-on”. Math and science and reading and history and social studies are busy subjects; there are posters to make, towers to build, costumes to sew, dramas to perform, songs to sing, dances to practice, places to go and people to meet.

The school in Boomtown rarely gives written tests — why should it? Once a kid graduates to adulthood, how many multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, cram-all-night-for-final-exams will he ever have to face? School is about learning SKILLS, like how to do research, how to ask good questions, how to listen, how to organize a plan, how to follow through, how to solve problems, how to follow instructions, how to devise a hypothesis and how to prove it. Memorizing lists of information that are forgotten after a test are a waste of time. Boomtown teaches kids how to do things, and if they don’t know how to do something, they teach them how to figure it out.

Education is about seeing with their eyes, listening with their ears, and doing with their hands. The kids in Boomtown are taught to see and hear and do as soon as they are old enough to play. They make their own fun. And by making their own fun, they make themselves creative and skillful. They learn teamwork and social grace. They become the sort of grownups who can teach other kids to be like them.

The Children of Your Town

What are the kids like in your town?

According to Nielsen Media Research, the average time an American child between the ages of 2-17 spends watching television is 19 hours and 40 minutes per week. In addition, 79% of all American children now play computer or video games on the average of 8 hours per week. There is a direct correlation between passive entertainment and obesity; between 16 and 33 percent of all adolescent children are considered obese, numbers that are three times as high as they were in 1964. Childhood diabetes is also on the rise; whereas fewer than 4 percent of childhood diabetes cases in 1990 were type 2, that number has risen to approximately 20 percent in 2006 (American Academy of Pediatrics). Of the children diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, 85 percent are obese.

You don’t need to be a research scientist to know what’s going on. Just take an average sampling of children and what do you see? Fat, lazy, pale, anemic, uncreative, unmotivated slugs. Ask them what’s going on and they’ll tell you. “Nothing.” Tell them to go and make something to entertain themselves, and they don’t know how. They lack the skill, motivation and the supplies.

What can be done?

A Plan of Action

Children who haven’t been ruined yet by years of television watching and video games have the most hope of becoming Boomtown kids. Children who have already been raised to be passive and lazy can’t change overnight. But they CAN change.

The real test is in the classroom and at home. Can teachers and parents change? If they will, here is a suggested plan of action for teaching kids how to make their own fun:

1. Start Young. The best time to teach a child to make the most of their playtime is before they get into school. The best toys are the ones that require the most creativity from the child that is playing with them. Here’s a hint. The cardboard box is a lot more fun than the overpriced toy that came in it.
   
   
2. Buy Supplies. What’s better, a plastic car that is already put together or a model making kit? A toy necklace or string and some beads? A picture to hang on the wall or paint and paper? An electronic, bleeping, flashing, noisy battery-operated toy, or some balsa wood and some glue? Instead of buying stuff, buy the things a kid can use to make stuff. Glue, string, wire, and nails. Hammers, scissors, rulers and cutting boards. Stickers and buttons and paper and paint and brushes and pencils and chalk. Instruction books and step-by-step project kits.
   
   
3. A Craft Room Instead of a Playroom. Instead of filling a room with toys, turn one of your rooms into a Craft Room, with smocks and paint tables and a linoleum floor. Fill the shelves with supplies that both you and your children can use to make stuff.
   
   
4. Tools in the Garage. Instead of buying more expensive toys this Christmas, buy tools for the family. A table saw, a drill press, a chop saw, drills, sanders, clamps, and more. Supervise your children closely. Show them how to use tools safely. Fill the shelves with scrap wood and plastic pipe and dowels and nails and tacks and hinges and more.
   
   
5. Turn Off the Toys. This will be the hardest one. Turn off the video games, computer games, iPods, CD players, television sets and portable DVD players. Limit sedentary, passive entertainment to 7 hours per week - 1 hour per day. As soon as your kids know that you are serious, they will either die of boredom, or begin to respond to your encouragement to make their own fun.
   
   
6. Work with Other Parents. Talk to the parents of your children’s friends. Talk about the importance of constructive, inventive, creative play for your kids. Share ideas and supplies. Open your home so other kids can come in. Help your kids create an interactive community of children, something that’s harder to find in a modern suburban/urban environment.
   
   
7. Make Fun Together. Kids who make their own fun have parents who make their own fun. You have to set the example. So, when you make dinner, have your children learn to cook. When you fix the car, have them help. For holidays and birthdays, MAKE presents and greeting cards - don’t buy them. Grow a garden. Build a treehouse. Make toys to play with. Make your own fun.

Copyright 2006 by Nowen N. Particular. All rights reserved. No portion of this article may be reproduced without written permission from Nowen N. Particular. Any quotation must be attributed to the author and copyright date and reference made to the name of the article.