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Show Youth creaiive when chailanged By MAHY GAE EVANS I'AHOVVAN - Have you ever noticed what great inventors kids are? Aside from all the great excuses they invent to get out of doing the dishes, they really are creative. Just for instance, have you seen the latest? Sometime during the Scout-o-rama held in Cedar recently, one of the boys bought some surgical tubing just for fun and filled it with water from the fountain. The result was an extremely high-powered squirt gun. Then, as the boys could see how much stretch the tubjng had, the next step was a giant flipper that would shoot a balloon filled with water a full block. You ask your kids to mow the lawn and they moan and groan about all the hard work. But, just tell them it's okay to build a "hut" to play in and they'll labor untiringly with a hammer and a dull saw for days; or work with a shovel eight hours a day for a week to fix an underground hideout. hide-out. Our hut was equipped with electric lights and carpet, but they got bored before they got around to the running water. Daughters moan and groan about "getting wet and messy" if you ask them to clear the table or help with the dishes, but they turn right around and go outside to create elaborate mud pies topped with shredded dandelions. Give a boy a piece of paper and before you turn your back it becomes a sophisticated airplane. air-plane. We attended a solemn awards assembly a few days ago and I noticed one of the boys had folded his speech into a plane. Luckily, he was able to unfold it in time to read it. Boys are especially adept at building wierd-looking bikes (or cars) out of old lawn mowers, while girls create beautiful play houses out of orange crates and evening gowns from discarded robes and a package of safety pins. Why is it with all this genius we can't teach them to wring out a wash cloth or hang up a towel? With all their ability why is it so difficult for them to hit the dirty clothes hamper with at least one sock out of four? I guess that's just not enough of a challenge for them. |