Cardboard Boxes For Christmas

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”― Confucius

 

 

  Christmas is right around the corner and the spending frenzy has been outrageous since Thanksgiving day. I was browsing through the toy department at Toys R Us the other day with my son, David. As I looked at the wide array of super hero action figures, game systems, bicycles, electronics and more, I recall thinking to myself; "Oh, that I were a child again".  

 

  As with all things pertaining to progress, nothing today is the same as it was 'yesterday', so actually it is unfair for me to go off on a tirade about how when I was a child my super hero costume consisted of a bath towel tied around my neck. (Even though that is the truth).  But I will say that in our day we, (those of us over the age of 50, give or take a few years) did have to employ a bit more imagination when it came to our playtime. I can remember how even a rainy day couldn't interfere with our having fun. It was then we would get Popsicle sticks and race them along the curbside as they were carried by the rushing rainwater. Other than trying to be the winner, the real trick was to catch your stick before it went down the sewer drain.  My good friend, Alex, and I would spend countless hours every week drawing comics and inventing story after story. Watching my sisters and the other neighborhood girls jump rope and do Double-Dutch was always so amazing to me and sometimes we boys would try to get in on the act but the girls were always superior at jump rope. Other familiar sounds which resounded throughout the neighborhood  were football games and baseball games easily played in the streets or an open field, girls playing Hop Scotch and Jacks on the sidewalks and the quick hand-slapping of younger girls while singing "Oh, Mary Mack, Mack, Mack all dressed in black, black, black".  And I believe that my older brothers loved collecting marbles more than actually playing the game.

 

  Recently in Ohio a preschool teacher named Pete Kaser removed all of the toys and learning materials from his classroom and replaced them with raw materials, such as boxes and egg cartons. To his surprise the kids did not ask for their toys back or even inquired as to where they were, but instead, immediately began exploring the materials and working together to build a variety of creations they dreamed up on their own; an igloo, a pirate ship, a rocket ship, a hotel and houses with makeshift kitchens.  
"I just spent so many years looking at all my teaching materials and thinking that so much of them have a preassigned value to them," Kaser said. "I wasn’t getting the imagination out of the children that I wanted."

 

A toy phone, for example, is going to look like a toy phone and function as a toy phone to most children, Kaser explained. The same goes for a cash register, or a train. But if you ask a child what he or she sees with a cardboard box, you might get 10 different answers and thus, more creativity, he argued.
Kaser said he plans to continue with the box experiment until the children no longer show interest, but so far, he said, the students are still engaged. In addition, several of the shyer children have come out of their shells and taken to leading some of the projects.

   

  So what is the moral of this story? I gently urge you to remember that after Christmas life will still go on so spend wisely; you have all year to get the things you want. I shy away from instructing others on how to run their own homes, but I never hesitate to compel others to remember the less fortunate. Do you always have to give gifts of hand-me-downs? I dare you to bless someone outside of your home in a manner unheard of. And above all, remember the lesson of the cardboard boxes. Sometimes simple really is better.

 

  I love you all,

  Dennis