Nature's playthings

Been enjoying myself and also entertaining my four-year-old daughter with this book, Nature's Playthings.

It's written by Alison Wilson Smith, a retired teacher, and mother of three children and four stepchildren, who certainly ought to know how to keep young people amused.

Her practical and lively book reminds us how to inspire young people to get outside and enjoy nature’s playthings. As the publishers put it: No batteries required!

Here’s how to make itching powder from rosehips, the rules of conkers, the joys of making leaf-boats, flea darts, grass whistles, daisy chains, poppy dolls and more. Of playing pooh sticks, stone-skimming, pond-dipping, stick-in-the-mud, dam-building and feather-collecting.

Now, the fact is that my family has been doing lots of these things already, sometimes all at once.

We recently found a dead dragonfly and built a funeral barge using pine cones, feathers and various stalky wildflowers, then set it on the river and watched it disappear under a bridge, only to re-emerge on the other side a moment later.

Less successful, I regret to report, was the use of bare hands to make loud owl hoots: I'd always wanted to do that as a child and couldn't master it. Now I find that I can do it, but this only upsets my daughter, who can't. Heigh ho.

Comments

[deoxy]

Do a google search for it, and you'll find it abailable on Amazon.co.ok. It's in the "new & used" section (meaning not from Amazon directly), but it's there.

[Peter Proctor]

This sounds like an interesting book, too bad no one can buy it anymore. I've looked at Barne's and Noble, Borders, Third Place Books (a local bookstore) and the Seattle Public Library. So what is the point? Are you trying to tell us all how lucky you are to have the book and what a bunch of losers we are because we don't? Why bother writing something like this when it isn't available to the majority of people that read your postings?

[Peter Proctor]

This sounds like an interesting book, too bad no one can buy it anymore. I've looked at Barne's and Noble, Borders, Third Place Books (a local bookstore) and the Seattle Public Library. So what is the point? Are you trying to tell us all how lucky you are to have the book and what a bunch of losers we are because we don't? Why bother writing something like this when it isn't available to the majority of people that read your postings?

[Bob C]

Tim Bartlett

Good Hit!!

Conkers - Does it also tell us where to buy the compulsory safety glasses and gloves to protect our poor bodies just in case something natural touches them!!!

Pah! Let them get a little dirty, risk a bruise or two when they smack their mates knuckles with the conker. What about Lolly sticks? I use to have a sixer (broke six other sticks and mine was still going strong)

Thats why we are all suffering from some allergy or other. We are all too clean!!

[Tim Bartlett]

Just wait til the health and safety gestapo catch up with you.
These things are all far too dangerous for 21st century children, who should stay indoors, playing video games until it is time for them to be ferried back to school in their mummies' 4x4s.
You see, the trouble with free, natural things is that they don't have the health and safety warnings that provide employment for civil servants, nor do they generate any tax revenue!

[Tim Bartlett]

Just wait til the health and safety gestapo catch up with you.
These things are all far too dangerous for 21st century children, who should stay indoors, playing video games until it is time for them to be ferried back to school in their mummies' 4x4s.
You see, the trouble with free, natural things is that they don't have the health and safety warnings that provide employment for civil servants, nor do they generate any tax revenue!