Entertaining The Children

Kid’s entertainment has been a lucrative business for centuries, ranging from clowns to travelling petting zoos to pizza parties at the local Chuck E. Cheese or roller skating rink.  Kid’s entertainment can even be found online at websites that are safe for them to play on and engage them in fun, learning activities.  No matter what activity or entertainment medium is used, however, kids will enjoy it more if it is engaging.

Over the centuries, kid’s entertainment has changed drastically.  Before the advent of the television, most children spent their free time in creative play, what little time they had.  If you stop and consider the changes over the last one hundred fifty years, you’ll find that kids today have more free time on their hands than their 1800’s counterparts.  Most children back then spent their days getting up before sunrise and doing chores, going to school, coming home and doing more chores, doing any homework they may have had, and then retiring for the night.  Play was limited to recess and after chores on the weekends.  And that is not including working any land that the family may have owned, as pioneer children did.

Toys back in the 1800’s included bicycles if families could afford them, hoops and sticks, balls, jump rope, and homemade dolls.  As time moved forward towards the turn of the millennium, the radio was introduced.  Children and their families sat down together to enjoy radio broadcasts that featured serial stories of famous characters such as the ‘Lone Ranger’.  Kid’s entertainment began to move and shift into family entertainment.  Of course the popular games of the time remained: tag, hide and go seek, and Simon says.  Other entertainment included the motion picture, now in colour and sound, going to the local soda shop with friends, and the roller rink.

With the introduction of the television in the 1950’s kid’s entertainment changed even more.  While there were plenty of family shows that people enjoyed, there were also shows geared towards children.  Classics today included back then ‘Howdy Dowdy’, ‘The Lone Ranger’ and ‘Roy Rogers’.  As more television programs became available and aired, more and more children began to sit down and watch instead of go outside and play.  While some of the programming over the last thirty years has been highly educational – television shows such as Sesame Street, the Electric Company, and Mr. Rogers – kid’s entertainment became less physical.

There is nothing wrong with television as a form of kid’s entertainment in moderation, but today’s youngsters need to be challenged and engaged.  By providing quality playgrounds and equipment, recreation centres, skate parks, bike paths, and other physically engaging activities, there is a good chance that we can once again focus kid’s entertainment away from the television and video games and back to exercising and just being kids.  Parents can help their children become more active by giving them a place to play and participating with them by playing things like Frisbee or tossing the football around.  Go to museums and art galleries and science centres if you are looking for some educational value, and introduce this type of kid’s entertainment to them before it is too late.