Imagination - let it soar!

For about the past three or four months, we have enjoyed an ongoing story, told by Gabriel, during our dinner.  For the first couple of months it was called "Haunted House" and basically dealt with us first going to a fast food restaurant, usually Taco Bell, and then ending up at a haunted house searching for bad vampires/ghosts/witches/skeletons.  Gabriel had been watching alot of Scooby Doo at the time, and had just watched Abbott and Costello Meets Frankenstein.  He just started it one night, and wanted us to join in with plot turns and surprises.


Then it morphed into the "Haunted Train" where we got on a train, and each night found a different booklet to let us know what spooky place we were visiting.  We went to a haunted beach, baseball game, museum, grocery store, restaurant, school, amusement park, forest, and airplane.  The airplane story lasted at least 2 weeks.  During all of this time the story participants were the four of us, Gabriel's classmates, and his two imaginary friends,  Brocklin and Orcornelius.  Oh, and their 100 friends.  


Then all of a sudden the story morphed again into all of us up and moving to a hotel so that we could be near Wacky World, the name of the aforementioned haunted amusement park.  It wasn't really about the haunted anymore, though.  It was about the rides!  We've never taken Gabriel to Six Flags, but I keep describing the different rides and he is getting more and more excited about going one day. Last week he came up with a really funny turn, when he decided to use his President's placemat in the game.  We pair up different presidents and they ride rides and fight over which one to ride next. They sometimes want to change partners to have one more, or less, adventurous.  I try my best to do accurate voices for the ones I have heard, but I am at a loss when he picks James Monroe or someone like that. 


There are nights when I would just prefer to sit and eat my dinner, quietly and with nothing taxing my brain to try to come up with a new part of the story.   But after watching this video below, I am inspired by Gabriel's imagination and want to nurture and encourage it.  Now I can't wait to see what he dreams up next.


(Note:  This is long, but SO worth your time.  Mom, get Dad to watch it too.)