Dangerous Things Kids Should Do

Too right!

And learning to ride a motorcycle well and safely is one of them! I believe if more people at least learn how to ride they will be more aware of us on two wheels.

I recall some of the things I did in my youth and try to get my kids to have the same fun.

Drew

Yep, here is my son learning the fine art of a hard landing

He wasn't hurt thank goodness. In fact, when he came to a rest, he jumped right on and kept on racing. He wears all the right safety gear including a neck brace. The whole family trail rides too. This is what's in our stable.

One great place we went camping and riding was at Rock Run in Pennsylvania. Here is an aerial view of the camping area and trail head. Our travel trailer and toy hauler are parked over the right side of the camping area.

See http://www.rockrunrecreation.com This was a great place to go riding.

I have a book called Electricity for Boys, published about 1910. One of the projects is building a battery -

Get some asbestos, lead, cadmium, and sulphuric acid...

The greatest loss is the child's not learning HOW to think outside the box. Where the "computer-game" has some merit in teaching the child a couple of computer skills, they are always limited to "what is in the box" and not how to think "outside the box." Outdoor and creative indoor play teaches the child creative skills.

What a computer game really lacks though is tactile response and consequence. The adventures of an outdoor kid are the best form of consequential teaching available......screw up and feel the pain, from the fall or your mother's (loving)wooden spoon...both work. Without which we will continue to grow a society that does what it pleases.

If a child wants a toy.... let them make one. Want a game.....let them invent one and set the rules. Don't dominate the process just keep an eye on how things go, using them to teach principles. Principles of right and wrong. Social responsibility to man and beast, earth and sky. Methods of design and construction.....big words for a cardboard doll house.

Just let them play outside. Please.

I'll be dipped common sense isn't dead

I grew up working and playing on our family farm. A lot of our play time was spent around the barns and tool shed. The only rule was for the tools - put it back where you found it. We made our own spears and swords out of scrap wood, and slingshots from sumac branches and old inner tubes, built caves in the hay mow, and made rope swings from the peak of the roof. By the time we were 14, we had field cars that we drove like maniacs, broke, and had to fix ourselves if we wanted to keep driving them. Nobody got seriously hurt, and along the way, I picked up some good intuition that served me better in engineering than any college class I took.

Years later, I would be Christmas shopping for my young nephew at ToysRUs. I would wander the aisles totally clueless as to what to get him. I knew if somebody gave me any of that crap, I would fiddle with it for five minutes, throw it on the floor in disgust, and go outside to build a dam in the ditch using rocks and downed tree limbs.

Playing outside with no supervision and no rules is good. Kids will figure things out and invent their own stuff. Some of them will continue to do that as adults. A number of my clients are "farm kids."

jhammond

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http://www.patent-innovations.com

My wife and I decided to change things up this Past Christmas and gave the grandkids hands on electronic and robot kits to build and a subscription to Makezine. It turns out there are projects in there that prompt the kids to turn on their imagination. Some can be considered dangerous if you want.

The projects are the kind we would have somehow come up with on our own back when there was only 3 channels on tv lots of board games.

I suppose the great graphics we now have in the tv shows and movies is causing most to not use their imaginations much.

What a great time we had then. Using a salt shaker for medical examine device, a police box for an time travel machine, and the countless old bicycles destroyed trying to get a lawn mower engine to fit.

I am now reading "Uncle Tungsten" and coming up with a lot more ideas to play with them.

Remember when you could go to the drug store to get carbon tetrachloride to put in a jar with a piece of rag as a tool in collecting bugs to pin on cards for 4H projects? You can't even get cold medicine now without a hassle.

I think the imagination is still there, We just have to remember how to encourage it.