My children decided they wanted to improve and fill our old sandbox. It's a very large sandbox, but had fallen into disrepair. It was filled with junk toys, broken things, and new grass growing. We cleaned it out, raked out the grass, and prepared it for it's new sand.
The children and I bought sand, and all by themselves loaded almost two thousand pounds of sand into our van. I was so impressed with how strong they were!
They worked hard opening and spreading the sand.
Even at the ages of 4 and 6, Maverick and Coyote had a hand in all of it. Coyote though, provided mostly emotional support. :)
The finished sandbox. It feels so good on the toes!
I remember when I was in school, we were given (given, not chose) plenty of projects to do and a lot of them required team work. Team work being the important factor here. We were to learn how to work together on something, regardless of whether we thought it was a good idea or whether we actually desired to do it. What I remember from that is that we worked hard, took orders, finished the job only to never return to the place again to enjoy it. Or if we did, we had to wait our turn to the point that most of us lost interest. I find my mind wandering back to my own school experiences when I think about my kids. It's interesting - because for me school WAS my life as a child. There was very little to think about outside of school as it was so overwhelmingly important in my life. For my children, they are not in school, and it is just life that is important.
I love that these kids are creating projects for themselves! Meaningful projects they can choose to work on together and see through to the end. They can spend all day on it or very little time, but the choice is theirs...and so are the benefits.
