This season, more than ever, is when children need freedom and experimentation, without us setting guidelines, simply flowing and discovering life. It is the beautiful time of Summer games
Long days of vacation, light that floods everything, temperatures that invite you to leave the house, blue skies and a time that expands and contracts at the same time, as if it were eternal: the summer of children. Let's tell you the most important of the summer games.
Free play
If during the school year children end up exhausted from guided activities, summer is the time when we must first let them experience free play. Cities are often hostile to children and other spaces that are more suitable for them should be sought whenever possible.
A group of children and a safe environment is enough for your imagination to start working and to invent a thousand adventures. Many times it is only necessary to supervise an adult who does not intervene to take care of their safety so that they themselves start playing. Free play is very important for children.
And that is free play with what they learn best both to know the world and to experience natural processes, and above all to relate to each other.
Blessed boredom
I propose you boredom as one more game, because I consider it equally important for the natural development of personality with free play. Children, like all people, need spaces and times in which they can get bored, with nothing organized.
Those moments of boredom are those that allow them, alone, to discover things about themselves, think and invent new proposals for relationship with the environment or new imaginary worlds. We have to let them get bored and, in those moments, discover themselves as individual people.
Of course, in this process, you have to respect the rhythms of the child and loneliness It does not begin to be enjoyed until after four years normally and not in all children. Anyway, even in the smallest ones, it is necessary to know how to give them space, even if we are present if they ask us to, so that they can entertain themselves.
But, I repeat, you never have to force each child and each evolution are different. If the child demands attention and presence we must give it, but always knowing how to maintain a non-interventionist attitude, to let boredom Make way for reflected creativity.
Water games
During the cold months we prevent children from getting wet. But play with water It is almost essential in this hot season. It refreshes, of course, but getting wet and knowing how wet it is all an apprenticeship too.
If we go to the beach, the sea will be enough as a game element, always with the necessary supervision for your safety. In addition, the wet sand, an inflatable pool or a small boat will delight the little ones.
When we go to the beach the sleeves and floats will add possibilities of fun, always being aware that they do not offer security for themselves and that we must be attentive and present. Buckets, shovels and rakes are also essential to play with the sand. And also hands to make mountains, bury in the sand or make castles.
With water we can also play with water even if we don't have the beach: water balloons, refillable guns, hoses and buckets or small pools in the patio will give thousands of hours of guaranteed cool fun.
Praise for freedom, dirt and climbing trees
Well, this is another one of the essential summer games. As you can see I do not propose specific games, but experiences, and it is that sometimes it seems to me that today's children are lacking in wild and natural experiences. And now, without schedules, without rains, it is the best time to offer them.
And you have to let them get dirty, which is also part of the experience of a game enjoyed and the experimentation with natural materials.
I have spent my childhood in places that offered us a lot freedom. A small town in Toledo called Alcabón where the fields planted offered a thousand adventures; the desert paradise of Rodalquilar, where I had a cave in the mountain where to take refuge, climbing, to dream.
Now I live in Cabo de Gata, one of those places where children go from house to house of the neighbors, take the bikes to the street without fear and can go hiking in the countryside around the corner. My two-year-old nephew goes out to play in the park surrounding the houses of the urbanization and jumps and runs and goes crazy with other older children in a safe environment and feels so free that it is sad to think that this will only last a month at year.
Depending on where we live we can offer children that lost life, but it is desirable to try to achieve it, always adapted to their age. More than organizing games, my advice goes through a compliment to freedom, to dirt, to the pleasure of climbing trees and walking along the paths. Take the opportunity to do this because nothing, really, nothing, is more important than these summer games For your children.
