A Child with No Toys

I recently took my grand-daughter down my farm for a few days. She is just nearly five; "four and three quarters", as she puts it.
As soon as her eyes were open in the morning she wanted to go 'outside'. "I'm glad it's morning", she said on her first morning there, "Now we can go outside".
And she never tired of those things to do 'outside'.
Although I had a few store bought plastic toys she showed completely no interest in them. Things in the 'outside world' held much more appeal for her.
Some of you may well wonder what did she find to play with?

She spent endless hours playing in the sand, making and drawing things with sticks, feeding and chasing the chooks (she was rounding them up she said), collecting eggs, looking for animal holes and tracks, collecting rocks to make patterns or drawings with, drawing pictures on the verandah with the ochre bearing rocks, doing some weeding and then feeding those weeds to the chooks, making some little holes with suitable sticks in the freshly weeded garden into which she could then plant some rosemary twig lets, gathering kindling for the fire, playing small rock tennis with a piece of cardboard, jumping over small rocks, singing special 'magic songs' to make the fruit trees and new herb seedlings feel happy and make them grow strong, lugging firewood from various locations were the 'woodman' had left them after using his chainsaw to cut up 'Nanna's dead trees', decanting water with a small container out of one of the rain tanks into a larger bucket and then watering the fruit trees and herbs and making 'magic fairy circles' around some of the trees.

Each morning the 'outside' activities started with feeding scraps to the chooks, letting some of them out, collecting the eggs and then doing a reconnaissance walk around the perimeters to see if there were any signs that the night time animals had left behind them in their night time activities.
After this walk was open slather time.

She collected enough small to fist sized rocks to fill a specially allocated large bucket and these rocks were used several times to make stories together. These rocks became sheds, carriages, sheep, chooks, flowers, trees, cars, trucks, buses, significant people in her life, houses and in one story she even made a city and a farm with a connecting road. During this game I thought about how child psychologists often use paintings and drawings in extracting information from children but these rocks I thought might be more useful when they are used interactively.
The sticks in the sand also took on several incarnations.
She so enjoyed feeding the chooks that she fed them about ten grains at a time and this rate facilitated feeding the chooks for around half an hour a session. She also made the chooks some little rivers to play in and to find grubs in after the water had subsided.

Who needs plastic toys?

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