“Children find sticks an endless source of make-believe fun. Sticks can turn into swords, magic wands, majorette batons, fishing poles, and lightsabers. When children pretend with sticks, they cultivate their creativity and develop their imaginations. They explore as they search outdoors for just the right one. Children build with sticks, bat balls with them, and walk with them. They are the original building blocks for creative play. Sticks also promote free play—the freedom to invent and discover. They encourage playing outside instead of inside. Sticks are all around us; they are natural and free. … Sticks are not only possibly the oldest toys, they’re possibly the best!”
-The Strong National Museum of Play
Happy stick season! Four Winds has created a guide to creating an open-ended outdoor play space anywhere with sticks, including materials to have on hand, adult role, benefits, and books. Check it out here. What will you do with a stick!?
Thank You for your recent Stick Play posting. Your essay was the spark for the short story I created “Fun with Sticks” for our local JFiN (Jericho (VT) communities in Nature program. FWI inspires our team and gives me ideas for essays and stories to promote being outdoors, discovering, exploring, and as my latest story shows, imagining with nature. You can read the story on my blog at https://jerichovermont.blogspot.com/2023/11/jfin-newsletter-fun-with-sticks-story.html