Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Ben With His Cart and Cans

Ben made a go-cart with his dad.  They scavenged the wheels from a broken stroller and a rusty wire shopping cart and used boards and odds and ends in the basement.  Ben was patient, but persistent  with his daddy's busy schedule until the go-cart was done.


Ben rides it almost every day with great joy and pride.  He's gotten several comments from the oldsters on the park benches who remember "building carts" when they were boys and thought youngsters didn't do that anymore.




Then Ben wanted to make himself stilts and raided my coffee-can stash in the basement.  There are metal cans down there, but he chose the plastic ones and was enamored with the way the drill melted the plastic when he made holes.  And Genevieve got into the can stash, too, to make a pulley system of cans from the balcony to pass messages back and forth.
 


None of these things were suggested or explained by me or my husband - I love how timeless children's play can be!


And then, to cap off his summer, Ben won a watermelon-eating contest at our block party.  His prize was a whole watermelon (ignore the tootsie-pops) which suited our family fine: a kid bringing home legitimate food!

8 comments:

Becky said...

How fabulous! I love when kids dig through the recycling bin to make stuff.

Anonymous said...

What a neat kid! He's adorable.

e said...

What a happy summertime post! Thank you for sharing the lovely 'ordinariness' of it. :-)

jenny_o said...

It is SO nice to hear of kids doing creative, active stuff and having fun. Ben has such a contagious smile! And is Phoebe walking there?? Yay!

BLD in MT said...

How charming and timeless indeed!! Also, that last photo sure captures the sticky satisfaction well! Good work, Ben!

Elizabeth Musgrave said...

Oh goodness. We used to do those things when we were children. I love his cart!

AmyK said...

This is so fun. My 6 y/o son loves to make things from our recycling bin, and I know he would love something like this. Too bad we aren't neighbors. He would love Ben's craftiness.

Polly said...

This looks like creative fun indeed!!!

Ah, summertime.

As an aside, your boy is awfully tall and lanky and old-looking!!