We are good over here at having fun times with the children! My husband and I made a decision when we started having children that we would work at making the home a place that our children loved to be at! We invite friends, we have potlucks…and we do it as a family. It is hard work and not always easy….but the rewards are great! The picture is of the 4th of July party at our son’s home.
Let Your Child Participate in Group Activity
Group activity is valuable not only for the lessons in cooperation; when organized regularly by parents in a neighborhood, it can do much to set wholesome patterns for play in childhood and wholesome entertainment later on.
We have on our land a typical New England foothill that we call a mountain. If we were to propose to our children, on a day when there’s nothing to do, that it would be fun to climb the mountain, they might very well answer, “But we’ve already done that.” But organized as a mountain climb, with five mothers and fifteen or sixteen children, we had a successful afternoon’s “play.”
All we did was climb to the top, rest, and climb down again. There were children from four to eleven, and each age group went at it in their own manner. The fours tagged along with the mothers, stopping to examine the pipsissewa, the wintergreen, the crow’s foot, and lichens.
The sixes and sevens shinnied up trees, scouted for Indians, and watched for deer tracks. The elevens ran ahead of everyone else and explored. When we got down, we ate coffee cake and drank cocoa, and the goodbys were “Oh, thanks. We had the best time.”
Every one of these children was a country child; most had mountains of their own. There was nothing new or novel about climbing our mountain. But doing it together made the big difference.
City families can work out similar activities with trips to the park, the zoo, museums, rides on the ferry, and without spending much more than bus fare and money for ice-cream cones. It isn’t novelty or detail that makes these things fun; it’s doing them together.
Such a group develops a host of common interests and a loyalty to one another that will serve well when they reach high school. At that time, too, the same parents stand a far better chance of setting curfews for the group that will be observed, as well as establishing norms about use of family cars, dress for parties, and coming back to one home or another for refreshments after dances.
Make Parties Simple and Fun
Parties are another form of play that contribute to the development of a child’s sense of hospitality and graciousness. There’s a saying: “God sends everyone to the door,” and the Christian welcoming guests to his party welcomes them in Christ’s name.
As a child of God, he invites his friends to share the bounty the Lord has bestowed on him, the warmth of his home, the food on his table, and the joy of fellowship.
Just a few things make a good party: something that’s fun to do; something that’s good to eat; and being together.
Simplicity and planning are the secret of successful party-giving. (One caution: children do not have fun in front of an audience, especially a bunch of grown-ups sitting around with a drink in one hand, waiting for the party to be over.)
This is almost the only way to establish that pattern of entertaining at home which is such a bulwark of wholesomeness in the high school years. Parties planned around creative activities are not hard to manage with small groups of children, and young guests have the added pleasure of taking home a drawing, or soap sculpture, or clay figure, or even, for little girls, cookies they helped bake and decorate themselves.
Parties for Indians to attend in full war paint are an ideal way of collecting children for a session of wild outdoor play. Flying kites, racing jalopies, dressing dolls — all kinds of quite ordinary play — become wonderful and new when done at a party.
One of the best parties we ever had was a Mad Tea Party. And it was mad. We had two Alices and a Mad Hatter in an old top hat, a sleepy dormouse (who, alas, didn’t fit in the teapot), a number of White Rabbits, a cardboard watch that we buttered, two unbirthday cakes, two tables with numerous odd cups (to which we moved after yelling “Clean cups! Clean cups!”), and positively no table manners.
We even had the half cup, happily rescued from the Fergusons’ trash as it was about to be thrown into the town dump. A delirious time was had by all, and our children were exceptionally well mannered at the table for days following the sky-high limit for manners at the Mad Tea Party.
Parties to celebrate liturgical feasts are joyous praise and prayer and are lovely revelations to children who haven’t yet learned to celebrate them.
“So I think that the whole fundamental measure of youth comes down to this: How alert is your mind? How responsive is your soul? How quick are your reactions? How many interests have you? Is the world wonderful to you, or is it a bore? Do you find most things delightful or annoying? Are you fond of new acquaintances and devoted to old friends?”
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Parties are work, and I find better outside. 😁 Theses are cool ideas, when you actually have friends closer by…… 😕
Excellent. Years ago my wife and I wanted to build a Catholic community that didn’t exist in the parish we attended. We starting hosting monthly Rosary & Dessert events. We invited everyone. Families attended, we prayed the rosary, drank coffee, juice, and ate the sweet treats that were brought. This has since morphed into an all day event including dinner. The children play inside if necessary but mostly they roam our 85 acres making up their own games and scavenger hunts. These relationships have become invaluable to my wife and me and our children. Our oldest son now brings his wife and child and our other older boys bring “dates” to this gathering. It wasn’t easy, but in the end, the community we so desperately longed for arose from our common bond of faith and family. Thanks for sharing!
What a beautiful testimony! Thank you for sharing!