Pillow People with other performers
It is late Tuesday night and I have just returned home bringing my three grandchildren Graf Kids, with me. They now are all sound asleep as I will soon be. However, first I would like to share an observation I made about children, age, nature and imagination.
Even though I know it is true, it is still hard to see children lose imagination with age. In times past when we made the journey back to Milwaukee we used to play silly games, sing songs and make up stories. Now the best I can do to pull the two older boys (10 and 8) away from their ‘Game Boys’ was to play a game of 20 questions. But even then I could tell they still had one eye on the video game they were playing at the same time. Outside of school, sleep and sports most of the boy’s time during the winter months is spent with video games and TV. Video games use some imagination but in much more passive way than reading a book or playing outside. Naturally my four-year-old maintains a good imagination.
The new observation that I made on this brief journey was how winter decreases their exposure to nature. Walks with the dog, bike rides, visiting the cow farm across the street, working in the garden, playing outside with the neighbors, seem to be limited in the winter, with school, TV, indoor sports and video games taking up their time. I mentioned going ice-skating tomorrow downtown and they just looked at me strangely. Their mother suggested taking sleds back but that would be difficult without snow. For the most part being in nature for the winter is reserved in going back and forth to the car.
This second observation is understandable since in the ‘old days’ we went outside to play, summer and winter, but we did not have the options of TV and video games.
One spark of imagination came through today when I went with my son to my grandson’s fifth grade family Thanksgiving celebration. With 75 fifth graders in the school there was lots of good food at the potluck dinner. After the dinner there was a talent show which my grandson was not scheduled to perform in. However he was asked by two girls to join them since one member of their trio was sick that day. All the other performers were girls, and for the most part they lip-synced and/or danced to popular recordings. It was long and not too exciting.
By the time of my grandson’s act, the last one in the talent show, over half the parents and children had gone home. It turned out that the two girls had asked my grandson to join them as ‘pillow people.’ They had a pillowcase with a face painted on it over their heads and top of body. Their hands held up the pillowcase. They danced to music and had those left cheering and laughing. This imaginative form of dancing with a pillow over your head and body was exciting and brought a good climax to the show.
So pillow people do not exactly bring nature into children’s lives, but they bring imagination and can compete with TV and video games, at least for now.
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