This adorable little kid is named David and I have seen him grow and learn now for five years.  When I first met him, he was barely able to walk and had the cutest chubby little legs that waddled when he walked.  Over the years, he has lost some of his baby fat, but hasn’t lost his childish sense of fun.  He will take anything you give him and turn it into multiple different kinds of toys, that you couldn’t even imagine if you tried.  In the pictures above, he took some modeling micro-beads that were being used to create different animals and stuck it on his face as a mustache.  When I cam back later, he had rolled some up into a ball and was throwing it back and forth with another boy.

I was amazed at the creativity of a six year old when it came to toys and games.  At the orphanage, they don’t even have a fraction of all the toys that most kids play with here.  They have a few matchbox cars and a meager collection of legos, but for the most part they play outside and with each other.  They’ll be able to come up with a game simply from sticks and some dirt.  One simply bouncy provides 10+ games, as opposed to just soccer or basketball.  They view play in an entirely different manner.

It’s hard to hypothesize where this creativity comes from, but if I had to guess I would say two things: Number 1- free time and Number 2: Lack of materials.  As children, they have next to no obligations besides bathing and eating.  So that gives them all the time in the world to think about games and play.  Secondly, they don’t have a lot of toys to work with so they stretch what they have and multiply their rewards.  Most kids in America just want more more more, but if they were more thankful and appreciative for what they have in front of them, they would’t be so focused on getting another toy.