My grandson and his family are currently enjoying Mexican sunshine; sea water in shades of blue, grey, green; churros, tacos, empanadas, and all manner of apparently delicious food which my daughter shares in her Instagram stories. Meanwhile, we’re taking their dog for walks in heavy rain, two or three times daily. (The cats were entrusted to a neighbour; my granddaughter, we were told, cried at the prospect of leaving them but judging from the happy IG photos, she’s adapted and compensated.) We’re happy for them. Really. . .
A weekend or two before they left, though, Grandson was bored, disgruntled, perhaps even disruptive, while The Grown-Ups (older sister is 11 now, and happily aligns herself with the grown-ups when she can; I could warn them this will probably change in the next few years), needed to do some travel planning. Could he go to Nana and Granddad’s instead, please? Yes! All parties thought this a good solution.
Even before he’d hung up his coat and kicked off his boots, he was showing me the Game Boy he’d made at home, in reality a rectangle of cardboard on which were taped appropriately shaped buttons (also cardboard) with marker-drawn arrows, a screen. A clever re-direction, in other words, of energy he might have preferred to direct toward playing a game on a working, hand-held console.
Clearly, though, the re-direction had brought its own satisfactions and he was keen to tell me how he’d made his cardboard version. As well, he told me, he’d gone on to make a bigger version of a game he played on his tablet (IF I understood him correctly, which when we’re talking about a 9-year-old born into videogame technology trying to explain something to his 70-year-old Nana who Wasn’t, is not an IF to take lightly). He’d left that bigger version at home because it would have been awkward to transport, but he wanted me to know how he’d made it.
He’d started with an empty cardboard box (so many of the best Kid Engineer projects do, right?), and then there was paper being cut to narrow its width and taped to adequate length. There were holes to punch in the side of the box and a big square hole to cut on the top of it. Then something about chopsticks and turning and the pictures on the paper moving. . . .
And suddenly I got it!
He was recreating his 21st-century video-game using the same simple yet ingenious technology my mother had used over 60 years ago when she’d brought a tool from her truncated teaching career to her passion for showing my siblings and I the delights of reading. My grandson never met his great-grandmother. His sister did, a few times in her first four months. She likes us to remind her of their last encounter, in the hospice where Granny was roused from her opiate fog to see her, to kiss her and to exclaim quite fervently, “Oh, what a beautiful baby! What a beautiful baby!”
Grandson missed Granny, though, by a couple of years. But when I told him that she had made something that prefigured his video game — a scrolling rendition of Mike McClintock’s Early Reader A Fly Went By — his eyebrows lifted, his face opened, he leaned forward to point out that there must be part of her in him. He fumbled through his science knowledge suggesting he must have figured out his game from having Granny’s DNA. I demurred, lightly, on the science, but agreed that Granny was living on through him.
And we were both captivated by the idea that Grandson had spontaneously engineered — in 2024 — something that His Great-grandmother (the mother of a little girl who would become his Nana) made, circa 1960. I told him more about the “book” she’d made, using wooden dowels (I think — did she have those around the house? did she have them cut? were they left over in the boxes of teaching supplies stored in a closet and lost to attrition during my childhood?), a large cardboard box, and a long, long, long strip of paper on which she replicated all the pages of McClintock’s entertaining, cumulative story.
I didn’t belabour the context — that McClintock’s book was published in 1958, when I was 5 and we were Five littles, my siblings and I (a baby sister was born in June that year). By the time we’d got to know it through our local library, perhaps a year or so later, there would have been six of us (half our eventual full complement!) — But while I marvel retrospectively at her continued urge to express herself creatively, to educate, to have something beyond the quotidian domestic chores of feeding and cleaning and keeping safe, Eight’s interest was more focused.
So I told him what the book-as-film-strip (he won’t have seen a film-strip, I don’t suppose; who remembers those?) looked like from my child’s perspective. The box from which the spooling handles protruded, the “pages” framed in the box’s cut-out screen. I would have told him more about the book itself — the pages Mom had copied free-hand onto the long roll of paper, the boy day-dreaming by the lake, interrupted by the fly who “went by” in a fearful panic, followed by a cumulative crew in that classic format familiar to early readers. . . .
But he’d already bee-lined to the recycling bin I curate for him (by curate, I mean that I hang onto cardboard boxes and tubes and whatever else might appeal to a budding engineer, long past when it should all be transferred to the bigger bin in the condo basement). Treasures: An empty Kleenex box; a long cardboard tube that once held wax paper; an empty toilet paper roll.
Now we only needed scissors, tape, and paper. I supplied these and took direction. Between us, the box was transformed with some judicious cutting; paper was cut and taped into a long narrow scroll; long tube was slotted through holes at one end of the box and the paper scroll affixed to it by tape. More complicated was the problem of that shorter cardboard tube, the one that had held the toilet paper. We could stick the scroll to it, but no handles would protrude for turning.
Granny would have been impressed, as I was, to see how her great-grandson solved the problem: first, he made two cardboard discs to close the openings on each side of the toilet paper roll; next, he cut small holes in the centre of each disc, and asked if I had a spare chopstick. Skeptical, but curious, I handed one over. . . and watched as an abundance of scotch tape was snipped and applied from numerous angles across every relevant surface until — success! — the chopstick fit tightly enough through the toilet paper tube to provide a second turnable handle.
Fiddly work getting fingers and tape and paper scroll inside our screen and attached to the handles, but by the time Master Eight left, we’d done it.
We also fit in a few more favourite slow activities that afternoon, as you can see in my journal page pictured above. So when I looked around for material worthy of copying onto our empty scrolling pages, I thought I’d commemorate the visit with one of Chris Harris’s rhymes, ever popular among the grandkids. I chose a short one (our screen was Kleenex-sized; I needed a Kleenex-sized rhyme!) — and made a very rough facsimile of a Lane Smith illustration, sticking to the upper fraction of the giraffe. . . .otherwise, I’d have needed the whole scroll!
He popped over with his Dad the day before they left on vacation, here to drop off our canine house guest. By then, I’d printed and illustrated our scrolling book, and I was touched to see how excited he was, how happy to show his father. This is a kid who, like most Eights these days, is accustomed to all manner of technological sleights-of-hand. He knows how to animate small narratives he can build with Lego; he was drawing and animating favourite soccer players when he was Six or Seven. And yet. . . .
Something about being able to see cause and effect so directly? No intermediating and invisible technology? Something about collaboration with an Aging Adult? Connecting with an Ancestor? Sharing creativity? Remembering that Simple can be Satisfying? All of the Above? . . . Who can say. Gratitude here, though, that we were home, that the Recycling bin yielded all the right stuff, that he told me something that reminded me of my Mom — that Serendipity connected the two of them through me for an hour. . .
I’m posting videos of our little scrolling book in action — look for it in my Instagram stories. Normally these only last for 24 hours, but I’ll save it to the story Highlights for the next while, at least. (My Instagram page is here; from there, you can navigate to my Story).
xo,
f
Aren’t grandbabies great? I can just imagine the fun you both had putting together your film reel. And the emotions thinking of your mum and how she would have enjoyed seeing her ggrandchild learning. I have five grandchildren, none of who were introduced to either of my parents, and I feel a sadness sometimes. My mum and I had, what could generously be called, a fractured relationship but yet one of my treasured granddaughters reminds me so much of her. The way she lifts her head, turns to look at you and her overall body structure. We never lose those that came before us. Genetics is a strange and wonderful thing. I enjoy your posts tremendously, thank you for taking the time to share with us.
Author
It’s true, Terri — “genetics is a strange and wonderful thing” and manifests itself in such a range of ways. And experiencing it (again) from a grandmother’s perspective, so much of our life behind us, so much of our gkids’ ahead, brings surprising insights. Thanks for letting me know you enjoy the posts!
Love this! Making memories and connections.
Author
Thanks, Elaine!
I am so very touched by this story of you and your grandson- even a little tear of pleasure. Thank you.
Author
Aw, thanks for letting me know, Patricia!
The joys of cardboard. My mother had oodles of patience with her grandchildren and was always quietly polite to them, spending time painting and drawing with my daughter in particular. They would sit at the kitchen table and chat about their works-in-progress while I got on with whatever I was doing. I was better at joining in the Lego fun with my son, the pair of us putting together our own versions of Star Wars craft. Very simple pleasures indeed and the chance to simply natter together, no pressure, no structure. Good for brains old and young.
Author
Ah, kitchen tables. . . I can picture the scene.
And it’s true, putting things together without pressure or structure, making things that way, is “good for brains old and young.”
Mater, I just loved this. Such an afternoon of delight for the both of you. Grandson is not only bright and creative but has sweetness too. He’s lucky to have been gifted a Nana like you.
Author
Aw, thanks for letting me know how much your enjoyed the post! Means a lot!
(and yes, he is all that! 😉
How wonderful to share such a special time with your grandson, who sounds like a very bright and engaging boy. There’s something deeply satisfying about handiwork – the pleasure of taking materials and transforming them into something else. Many rolls of tape and pieces of paper were sacrificed during my daughter’s “cutting and sticking” phase when she was a preschooler. She would cut paper, often after she’d drawn on it, into odd shapes then stick them back together. It was very good for her fine motor skills and she was amazingly focused during the activity – very handy for me if I needed to get dinner underway or work alongside her doing pressing bits of office-work. Even better are the memories of the hundreds of books I read and reread to her. She repaid the favour a few weeks ago when I was feeling a little unwell by reading to me!
Author
Well, I’m biased, but I have to agree that he is “very bright and engaging” 😉
And I also agree with you on the deep satisfaction of making something “from scratch” using found materials, particularly. Easy to speculate that it’s a satisfaction which emphasizes how important creativity (being able to problem-solve, to make what we need) is to survival.
Lovely to hear that your daughter read to you while you weren’t well — and that her doing so recalled all those earlier times when she was the listener. Hope you’re feeling much better now!
What wonderful memories you are making Frances! this reminds me of the volunteer work I do with two other women at a local animals shelter. We put on birthday parties for children as a way to raise funds for the animals and do a bit of PR. Of course the puppies are the main attraction but we provide simple craft projects as an activity. It is all low, actually no tech. Everyone gets a craft paper animal to decorate as they wish, using markers, crayons, maybe a bit of bling, yarn. sometimes a small sketchbook as well. They get so involved, and the results are so creative and unique to each child. We make sure to get a photo of all of them together before they take their creations home. These kids have access to technology but so gratifying to see them get such joy in in this.
Author
What a great idea for children’s birthday parties! And although I’m sure it’s a fair bit of work, how satisfying for you as a volunteer.
Oh Frances, what a heartwarming glimpse into those connections. Thank you. I really know how wonderful those spontaneous activities, that go off on tangents, can be. I have had quite a few of these moments with my almost 8 year old granddaughter. She calls to ask if we can collaborate on something creative and I love being part of developing something together with her.
Loved the problem solving skills your grandson employed and the fact that later he was still so obviously excited by what you’d both been working on! Xx
Author
It’s such a great way to spend time together, isn’t it? And as Annie says, above, these kind of activities make space for an easy way of chatting together — organically rather than simply us asking questions about how school’s going.
Cardboard is always a winner. It featured heavily in my 1960s childhood, helped by the cardboard “makes” on the BBC children TV programme Blue Peter which were attempted by the whole nation. No grandchildren on the horizon here yet and I’m hoping my cardboard skills won’t have deserted me if there are any in the future! And just to reiterate from Instagram – so lovely to hear your voice!
Author
I’ve heard of this programme, but just looked it up and see there were many, many offerings for cardboard crafts — and wow! such longevity! (the show, not necessarily the cardboard 😉 In fact, should you need “cardboard skills” to share with future grandchildren, Blue Peter will likely be there for you.
Thanks for the comment about hearing my voice — I don’t love hearing it recorded, so I do appreciate the positive feedback. xo
Yes, Blue Peter is a stalwart. The two most famous makes from the past are the Advent Crown (introducing lighted candles to your hanging festive decor – always a good idea with young children), and the Thunderbirds’ Tracy Island, where no household items was safe from being appropriated for use. Best part of the show overall was the elephant in the studio and its test of British sang froid in presenting, complete with the famous “ooh, get off me foot!” https://youtu.be/P66mUNV3rKY?feature=shared
It is so lovely to have time, creative energy and a focus for that youthful energy. You’ve painted a charming picture of you and your grandson’s project. Thank you for that.
In return may I suggest an instagram site where I delight in watching this wonderful Italian fashion maven talk about fashion, style, fabrics et al – the video clips are wonderful – women of special ages and stages. If you enjoy hearing the spoken language – I don’t understand much – but she is a powerhouse I think:
San Carlo dal 1973 @sancarlo.1973. I hope you enjoy watching and listening too
Author
Thanks for this suggestion, Laurel. I do enjoy hearing the spoken language and especially a woman like this speaking about fashion, style, etc. I’m following her account now, recommendation much appreciated.
I started reading this last Sunday, but then was totally caught up in the birth of my youngest granddaughter, and going up to meet her in Seattle. I’m still up here, thoroughly enjoying a brand new person to fall in love with. While she is sleeping I’ve just been able to return to reading this post.
How I love the creative process that is ready to be engaged in every child! Being part of that as a grandmother (as opposed to being a parent or teacher of young children as I once was) is so freeing, I think. My granddaughters are too young yet to be as industrious and clever as your grandson, but the time is not so far off. The oldest granddaughter will be five this June…We already have had some amazing creative adventures!
Author
Oh, how wonderful Linda B! Congratulations to the family and welcome to the world, little one!
It really is a wonderful adventures, isn’t it? Enjoy!