This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Banana Boat® and OFF!®. The opinions and texts are all mine.
Creeking. It is verb, but not one the spell-checker recognizes. It’s the act of wading through a creek, playing and searching for treasure. Usually involving kids. My children love creeking. In fact – every young child I know closely loves creeking. In order to love creeking though, your child is going to have to be taken to a creek. And the most likely and safe way for that to happen – is if you take them. So my plan with this post is to convince you of the finer merits of creeking with kids. You know – the benefits.
With sunscreen and bug spray out of the way, we headed down the hill that is our backyard, to the woods. We are very fortunate to have a small creek right in our backyard forest. The small creek drains to a larger creek, which is unfortunately too high to play in right now, but we have been enjoying our higher-than-normal backyard creek quite a bit! I couldn’t resist a quick picture of the boys in their creeking boots at the top of the path.
Creeking gives my boys a chance to explore – something children desperately need in this electronics age. The boys like to climb over rocks, pick them up, look for crawdads, mess with trees and sticks — just about anything qualifies as treasure! I offered to pay each one a dollar if they found a crawdad today, but we were out of luck.
What we did find was a lot more water than we normally get to enjoy back here! The younger boys were amazed at how it felt to fill their new boots with water, so they did that particular joyous activity for a long while. At one point, they even took their boots off to use them as buckets and get each other wet! Joshua even figured out that if he propped his foot up on the tree while draining his boot, he could avoid getting dirt and sand all over his foot and in his boot. Puzzle solving and critical thinking skills.
My older son enjoyed a bit of climbing and balance work on trees that had fallen and also tried testing his strength trying to straighten the trees bent from years of creek water. He wasn’t successful at that, but he did get a chance to study the roots and consider the cause of crooked tree growth. He also studied two fallen trees to figure out which one fell first and why he couldn’t find a hole from the root ball of each. I’m not sure you can tell from this picture – but these branches were actually about five feet over the ground. So he had to do a little muscle work to swing down – like monkey bars.
He worked up quite a sweat! The boys finally turned to exploring the rocks and cutouts of the bank from water flow over time. They spent some time discussing the evidence of high water, and a much larger creek bed with the oldest instructing the youngest about how that all worked. But with my boys – in the end it always comes down to rocks and who can find the coolest rock to haul up the hill for my garden.
As if all that science and critical thinking and physical activity wasn’t enough to convince you to take your kids creeking, recent scientific evidence points to improved brain function from getting out in the woods to explore.
As we headed out to the creek today, I decided to try our new Off! Active® spray to keep mosquitoes and ticks away and of course a little Banana Boat® Sun Comfort™ Spray sunscreen – both from my Walmart trip yesterday. Creeking is one of those occasions that calls for both! I just set the precedent early that these things are not optional when we are going to be out in the woods or creek. Banana Boat® SunComfort™ Water resistant formula (up to 80 minutes) allows sand to easily brush off (a must when you are out in the creeks!), moisturizes to relieve dryness, provides safe and effective broad spectrum protection, and is available in SPF 30 and 50+. Full Disclosure: Comments submitted may be displayed on other websites owned by the sponsoring brand.
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