Childhood Connection to Play...

     I am 5 years old with my sister, brother and two of my cousins at a small stream. My mom, who sat two feet away from us, to make sure we were playing safe and not hurting each other. We were given a shovel, bucket, light, thin blanket, and a play fishing pole. The stream was very small and the water was calm enough for us to walk through it and find rocks, sticks and tad poles. My sister and I starting looking for big enough sticks to make us a little tent to keep cool, while my brother and two cousins were out in the stream looking for rocks, tad poles, leaves, sand and acting like they were fishing. My sister started to make the tent with the sticks found and placed the blanket over the sticks. I gathered the leaves that were picked up by my brother and placed them like into a plate, grabbed two handfuls of mud and started shaping the mud into a pie. I placed flowers I found around the stream and any tiny pebbles to make decorations with the mud pie. Between my brother and two cousins, they found ten tad poles that was placed in the bucket. The tad poles became our pet and raised it until it became frogs. 

     After I was done with the mud pie. My sister and I go walking in the stream looking for pretty rocks or flowers, big branches and collecting sticks to bring to the tent. The branches were to use it as a broom to sweep the area so we can lay down like it was cement. The sticks was to make a bomb fire to cook dinner. I went out to the stream myself and try catching tadpoles. They are quick little suckers, but I managed to get one out of the many I saw. We laughed, splashed water at each other, slipped a few times, and went back and forth until we got tired. We all came back to the little tent that was built and relaxed. It was not too long afterwards my mom said it was time to go home. We were still damp from the water, dirty feet, bucket full of tadpoles, tired, hungry, and ready to go home.