A Child's Imagination

We went to our family get together on Labor Day.  While there, the kids cut some bamboo sticks and brought them home....because, face it, bamboo sticks are the coolest.  They sound exotic and *pandas* eat them.
For days, the kids were knights with swords, samurai with swords, and just warriors in general.  Jacob hit his bamboo on the side of a tree and splintered the end. What followed was a progression of thought that led from bamboo stick to torch.
Jacob's first thought was to stick a pine cone into the splintered in because "it looked cool, Mom."
Then Malachi says, "Oh, Jacob...remember in Lord of the Rings when the Orcs had those torches?  We should make a torch."
This led to the adding of pine needles into the splintered end on top of the pine cone.  Pretty good plan....

Of course, the next course of action would be to light it up....

Malachi grabs the matches and off we go to a non-wooded area to give our torch a test run....

It's harder to light a torch than it looks...when there's a breeze blowing.  But, the warriors are persistent...and their perseverance pays off....

We have fire!

 

...and a lot of smoke...  smoke signal, anyone?

The boys got the torch going really well...  I had been telling them the entire time not to hold the torch straight up or the lit pine needles might fall down on their hands and burn them.  Once they got the fire going great, I said, "Oh!  I'll take a picture!  You guys stand together and hold the torch up."  Yeah, I said that.  And my child listened, and he held it up.  And of course, the pine needles fell down...and he threw the torch down.  And the fire went out...and they couldn't get it lit again.  And of course it was Mom's fault.  "Why did you tell me to hold it up, MOM???"

It was really cool while it lasted though.  I loved watching the imagination and thought that went into the making of the torch...and their excitement when the torch was on fire and smoking.  That was awesome.