Friday Favorites 5/18/2012
Thinking back on growing up in the 1950s, I can think of only one organized activity before high school … and that one, Cub Scouts, was organized by my mother. Some kids played on Junior Basketball or Little League Teams but for some reason, I didn’t. However, living in a neighborhood with a dozen or so boys roughly my age, we organized our own activities, mostly in the hayfield behind my house. We mowed it, marked out base paths and end zones. We even made a a very rough four hole golf course. We didn’t have Indian Guides but we built bows and arrows from branches and made our necklaces from acorns. We invented songs and put on shows. We also argued and fought out of the earshot of our parents, settling our own disputes our own way.
Things have sure changed. No parent these days would let their kids disappear into the local hayfield … or the woods … as we did as children. Their lives are planned and organized. Get-togethers with other kids are play-dates organized by Mommy. At three, my grandaughter, Savy, has already had a dance class and been in a recital. Maddux has played on three different flag football teams at five, and Reed, who’s in first grade, has played organized soccer, baseball and swimming. He’s also been in the Running Club and the Junior Chorus at school. All these organized activities may not teach the lessons we learned organizing our own but they sure bring a lot of joy to our visits to Arizona. This week’s Friday Favorite is a number from Reed’s Junior Chorus Concert. I love the sound of children singing and I’m inclined to believe that learning a love of music is more important in the long run than sports. Anyway, here’s I’ve Been Working on the Railroad with first grade three-part harmony. Reed is the handsome, hatless young man in the middle of the frame.
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Older Eyes 
May 18, 2012 at 1:52 pm
Reed’s concert is so cute. It is a really good thing that he didn’t wear a hat. If you woud have said the one with the cowboy hat we would be in trouble. He is a handsome little guy!!
I think it is sad that kids can’t go out and run and play like they once could. My brother and I would play tag, hide and seek, and such until our parents all but forced us in for the evening. I haven’t seen a kid roller skate or jump rope in years. This is one area that surely no one could say “we have progressed.”
May 18, 2012 at 7:22 pm
Even when my kids were young, they played on the streets relatively unsupervised. There’s no substitute for working things out on your own, then getting corrections if you screw up. I suppose the world’s changed so much that we can’t ever go back. Or is it just that we’ve becom hyper-vigilant with our kids?
May 18, 2012 at 5:05 pm
First grade? I’m impressed! That was a lot of singing and they did a great job! I love choir concerts when the kids are young like this. They’re so willing and enthusiastic. A few years down the road, the “it’s not cool” bug hits too many of the kids.
May 18, 2012 at 7:24 pm
Reed loves singing … he’s lukewarm on sports. His parents want him to “have a sport.” … I wish that they could see whatever he enjoys as “his sport.” We’ll see where it goes.
May 23, 2012 at 6:45 am
Reed’s parents probably worry that unless he has some sports-type activity, he might become a couch potato, nerd type, in front of a computer all the time. A possibility, of course, but as involved as he was in the singing, I’d say maybe look into some kind of musical activity to keep him learning and excited too about doing that! Like you -I really love seeing/hearing kids singing. Both my younger grandkids are supposed to be in the children’s choir at church but of late, Kurtis hasn’t wanted to participate for some quirky reason of his own. However, this past Sunday, the kids sang at the church service -a beautiful song (Morning Has Broken) and what struck me as interesting was that the first three kids in the lineup – my granddaughter in between two little boys -was that those three kids in a group of 6-8 kids, max, each has autism! They are all three very high functioning too with the one boy a 6-year-old veritable sponge absorbing information constantly!