Pebbles and Ripples on the Pond and Sand Castles = Great toys

Some of the best things you can do for and with your child, is take him to as close as you can get to nature. The younger they are, the more important it is. Give them time to be still in that place. Let them discover there.

Don't be afraid when moments of nothing happening occur, for those are the times when the child can begin to discover something new for himself. Let him or her have enough time in one place with no supervised "games" to begin to see, and know, and consider that he might understand something new around him.
If necessary, you can prime the pump for him, you can point the way, give him a starting place for thought; but after awhile, let him experience as much as possible on his own. It can be very good.

A long time ago, but in the last hundred years of history, many children got to grow up tasting the natural things of God's creation.
Scripture says, "...the things which can be known of God are clearly seen by what He created..."

It is such a different experience for a young mind to walk through the trees and grass toward a creek teaming with life: fish, frogs, tadpoles, birds, crickets, butterflies, sweet smelling earth, leaves on the ground that crinkle under your feet... dirt that is good for drawing with a stick, building like a castle, or digging a hole.

The simplest things are the most versatile. Like dirt, good soil dirt that a kid can do countless things with, using his imagination and his hands.

He can dig holes, hide buried treasures. He can build a fort. Draw pictures. Play games, make a mud pie. And do so many things with the wet clay earth, and it's free, unlike store bought clay, and the supply is endless when you're by the creek bank.

So many things, almost countless, when you get down to the smallest sizes of little bugs and beetles for a child to experience and notice. Like a cascading telescope from the tallest trees to the tiniest little bug he can find. Who will notice the doodle bugs crawling through the dirt?

A child in the woods by the creek has time to watch the ripples spread on the water as he tosses up a pebble and watches it fall into the water, sending out wave after wave after wave of waves going forth from the center of the pebble's bulls-eye.

He can watch a little longer on a creek not too wide, to see those same ripples ever expanding, and finally bouncing back upon themselves as they reflect from the bank of the stream.

The more he watches, the more he learns, true things and worth learning. But with tv, and the mall, he only learns what other people think, and how to spend money or go into debt, or how to seek pleasure, and how not to be think for himself, but to let other's guide his every thought as tv is so prone to do.

Then, people sat around a campfire and talked. Now, they all stare at a tv, even more so during the tintillating commercials. Then, ideas were shared between friends and neighbors, between people of the same mind who shared their time together. Now, ideas are spewed forth from the tv, from commercial interests and mass-psychology manipulation.

Back on the farm, a child got to see his parents work and see the fruit of their labors. He or she got to walk along side and maybe help gather eggs from the chickens, or milk a cow, or plant a seed, or pick weeds, or harvest a crop. They got to see mom and dad working and learned how to be with them. Now, all that learning experience is missing. Instead, they go to day-care, where the tv is abundant and meaningless activities occupy their time. Then, children were given a beginning set of thoughts around mom, dad, work, scripture, right and wrong, and personal friends. Now, children are given the idea of foolish cartoons, often filled with homosexual overtures even on Sunday morning children's cartoons, and other garbage for their food for thought.

Today, too many children are taught that anything and everything is OK, almost before their parents have a chance to teach them right and wrong.

What does a child learn while he sits on the creek bank? How long does he sit fascinated by the every expanding wave of waves from the pebble he tossed into the creek?

How much does his mind ask questions and seek answers about the ripples as they travel and finally bounce off the banks and rebound back into one another causing even more secondary ripples?

What does he learn? He learns to be patient, to watch cause and effect, to see interactions. And he is thinking on true things, not fantasy, not sick humor tv, not even weird alien non-existent sci-fi tv.

He is learning truth and the way things are at their foundations.
He is learning things God intented us to know.
And those things early become a foundation for understanding man made things.

I had rather my child experience the truths of creation and know them long before he is lured to the fantasies of virtual games where nothing is real, and endless fantasy builds upon endless fantasy.
Who is to say what a child raised on virtual fantasy games will be. I know already, that many are thinking very little is real because they see their main influence is not real.
But throwing a pebble up into the air, and watching it's curved path splash back down into the water, causing a cascade upwards of a wall of water while the pebble sinks down, and then following the cause and effect ripples has more to teach your child than could be covered in a book. And patience to watch, and stillness to sit is part of that very important lesson.
Using his own mind to observe, and learning to love the truth of things,... these lessons are rare to find.
Give as much of them as you can to your child.

This was posted at http://www.christianparents.com/thennow1.html by Larry A. Rice

Hope you like the thought. I truly hope parents can give their children more of what is good, and less of what just leads to rootlessness. Children need roots. That means solid truth instead of pure fantasy. We have to work hard in today's world to give children the beauties of nature. But God will help us do it if we're willing. Amen.