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when i was little, my girl cousins and i (and Andrew and i, too) loved playing in the woods. we would go down to the creek and play in the mud and trapse around in the water, and us girls would often play house and sing songs to our (imaginary) lovers. and the favourite game that all of us would play at Brenneman's was "blizzard." we would move all the dolls and miniature kitchen stuff out onto the porch and pretend that we were buried in snow (which we would learn to despise as soon as we moved to Goshen...). it was a blast- we were also pretty imaginative!

We had an old discarded wood cook stove behind the garage under the cherry tree, it was my favorite play kitchen for a while. One year I picked green beens and "canned" them, I remember how stinky they were when I finally threw them away. I also liked to imagine the front porch was my very own house and play there. Jr Hi years were spent in the woods with Karen and Lois trapsing, Judy got to come if she carried my books home. I was practice being in charge I guess. I remember giving the trees and certain places names. There were forget me nots behind the pond.

I say the best thing you can do to foster imaginative play is to read to a child, or to encourage them to read on their own. And don't let them watch television. Much. (Unless it's classic cartoons or serial cliffhangers or science fiction.)

Yep, Carolyn and neighbor Lois, get me to carry ALL of their books home from school (.5 mile or so). I got to play with them in the woods if I did that. We liked to play in the old 'Clymouth' car. Carolyn and Lois (and/or Karen) got to choose where I sat and what I did. They had a lot of power over me, since I was the little Turd Curl sister.

One of my fond memories is playing in the sandbox. It was more of a sandpile under a large pear tree. It did not have well defined boundries, so we had both sand and dirt roads. When the sand became too dirty, a trailer load of sand from the "pit" behind the tile factory was added. Our store bought toys shared the highway with those we made from wood.

My older sister and I used to play "Alligator" on my parent's 4-poster bed. The carpet was blueish/green and served as the river. The bed was the boat. We used to hurl ourselves off of the boat, grab on to one of the posts and swing around back on the boat while the alligators snapped their jaws at our backsides. That game was great, until I missed the post and cracked my head open on the corner of the bed--then the darn alligators attacked me! It was a rough day.

Poor Mac!!!