A Night Full of Giggles (and Learning)

The kids were over a their friends' house last night and when I went to pick them up, all four of them were deep into a group project of creating a corporation called "Unknown Industries". They had a CEO, an Executive Officer, Marketing Director, and secretary. The Marketing Director kept coming out to the kitchen with ploys to get us adults to invest in Unknown Industries, or buy their (unknown) products. At the end of each marketing spiel, all concerned collapsed in fits of giggles.

By the end of the evening, I was smiling and laughing so hard that my face hurt. It's so cool to see four kids ranging from 7 to 13 completely engaged in such deeply imaginative play. It's the kind of thing I most fondly remember from my own childhood. I remember setting up an entire cardboard "bank" with my cousin and painstakingly using a rubber stamp pad and letter stamps to write up our business correspondance. Though our play of 30 years ago did not involve the sophistication level of CEOs and marketing plans, the imaginative aspect and sheer amount of fun remains the same.

I love getting these constant reminders that a child's work is play. And therein lies their learning, as well as the memories they will cary forward to their own futures.