My favorite thing to do growing up in Pittsburgh. We lived in a new subdivision and there were woods behind us for many years before more homes were built and they were full of what we called "monkey vines". Looking back, that was the most fun thing to do ever!!
It reminds me of the kid that has more fun playing with the box than the present that came in the box! "The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."- Albert Einstein
@Nancy Hart Reminds me of my first wife's and my trip to Germany in 1972. As a kid, living in Augsburg at the age of 11, she and her friends were swinging by a rope which allowed an arc out above the hillside. She fell, went home with a greatly swollen wrist (broken, determined the next day), was admonished by her mother and put to bed. Next day at school, the nurse sent her for medical help, where a cast was put on. We actually hiked to the spot where she had been hurt 16 years earlier, and she pointed out the very tree used! The old European cultures followed some strange directions. When my own Mother as a small girl fell on broken clay pipe tiles in Iowa (her father worked in the tile plant Wm. E. Dee Co.), blood gushing from her forhead, the first thing her mother did was spank her, while blood gushed from her forehead! Such an event was never to be forgotten by a kid. My mother told that story so vividly, I'll never forget it, or the names involved. I found this:
If you give a kid a bunch of fallen leaves, this is what happens. Taking time for a quick swing. Guess who is going to get a free leaf shower whether she wants it or not? Rotten little stinker!
How about a large tree by a rock, a rope tied to a large limb and a lake? Get on the rock, grab the rope, swing out over the lake and let go of the rope.
I see the young children in my family and they have too many toys, especially toys which use absolutely no imagination to play with. The kids have rooms of toys and they're bored. But give them a cardboard box or a board, a hammer and a handful of nails and they're happy. One Christmas, we had three five-year-olds at the house who got enough toys to fill an FAO Schwartz store and what did they play with all Christmas afternoon? A cardboard box that a TV had been packaged in. They took turns for hours pushing each other up and down the wood-floored hallway in the box. Then they spent the next couple of hours cutting up Christmas cards and gluing the pictures on paper. I could have saved a lot of money that year......
Those were summer and fall. This brings us to winter. Give a boy a few inches of snow. And he will build a snowman. With a little help from his Dad. The zombie snowman