Gifts for Kids....Shelter/Fort Kit

[hunter63]

Got little ones?......that may be interested in outdoors, camping, building and use of their imagination?

Maybe you want them to....?

Found this while looking at shelters .

Kids "Fort" KIT,...... with the making of a living/play room shelter/fort or private area....they build them selves......for $20 bucks.

We used old blankets, sheets, clothes line and clothespins.....

http://www.lakeside.com/Toys---Elect...vyCxoCyQPw_wcB

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Makes me wish I would nave had this when I was a kid..........Of course my folks wouldn't have bought me one anyway....LOL....but Hey?
OK make your own kit for the kids with you found materials......

Todays fort maybe tomorrows shelter.....knowledge for the rest of their life.

[crashdive123]

Yep - old bed spreads and kitchen chairs were the main staples for our indoor forts........at least they were until supper time.

[kyratshooter]

My mom always wanted us out of the house. No tents or forts inside.

But she did give us motivation to stay outside. The year I was about 9 she bought us a pair of surplus shelter halves.

We set it up and it stayed up all summer every summer for years. We camped in the back yard in serious fashion. We did overnighters two or three times a week. Even had a fire pit. I learned a lot playing around and sleeping outside all those years ago.

[hunter63]

We (our neighborhood gang) always made use of found, donated and salvaged material to make forts out of lumber, and trees we cut...no one paid much attention to us cutting 8" new growth jack pine.

Camping was my Red Ryder tent, MF canvas drop cloth (smelled like paint and linseed oil) and of course my milsurp mummy bag.....was about a geared up as a kid can be.

I saw these kits and thought of my GS.....we had given him a Ducks Unlimited Green Wing(youth organization for DU) dome tent and sleeping bag.....prize from a dinner....and that tent has been set up in his room since...and he sleeps in it from time to time.....especially when he has company.

Give a kid some materials to play with seems to me a way to get the imagination going and maybe a desire to explore and expand the experience.

I have also posted this on another (ahem) forum....so far not much response, which I fully expect.......
NOW if there was a $130 buck "best" house tarp involved....or a poll on, "What is the Best Shelter Kit"....I would guess the discussion would go on for 23 pages.

This isn't "The Best" anything..... except maybe an "Idea" for kids.
My best project was a copy of the "Spaceship" found in the back of comic books.....along with the Sea monkeys, and X-ray glasses......made for a cardboard refrigerator box......
Truly a kids best find...everrrrrr.

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[kyratshooter]

We would have killed for a refrigerator box!

When I was about 13 me and the brothers and a couple of neighborhood hooligans went down the creek behind the house a ways and found an island mid creek. We decided it was the perfect spot for a fort, if we could get to it. Needed a bridge.

We built a monkey bridge, just like in the BSA handbook. Got to the island and started fort construction. We were down there daily for over a week before the guys at the local funeral home called my Mom. The island was where the creek flowed behind the funeral home.

They were not complaining, they just wanted my Mom to see the chunk of Disneyland we were building! They were of the opinion that as long as we were building a fort mid-river we were not getting into any trouble elsewhere. They seemed to be enjoying watching the progress.

Those guys buried both my Mom and Dad when they passed.

It was good growing up in "small town USA".

[hunter63]

Yes it was.........
A woods, a mill pond, and several "mounds" (buttes) left over from the last glacier ....what more could you ask?

Boys that need money for nails and paint,...as well as gas for the 5Hp Martin motor on my buddy's GM boat.....would deliver papers, mow lawns and paint garages for cash.

[crashdive123]

Ah - old refrigerator boxes. In the summer they were unstoppable tanks. In the winter they allowed safe passage from one snow fort to the next. In the water they were incredible boats, albeit not for very long. Refrigerator boxes gave us endless entertainment (and exercise).

[Manwithnoname]

Oh you guys bringing back the memories. Me and my neighbor best friend. Ours was a natural hollow between a huge boxwood shrub and a retaining wall with a privacy fence atop it. A couple of plywood scraps for a roof, that same smelly canvas drop cloth for a back, scavenged bricks and rocks for a fire ring in the front. We spent many a night with cans of Wolf chili, pork and beans, our trusty crossman 760's and a transistor radio listening to the radio shows on AM that were still on back then. Good times!!

[Rick]

I have probably killed more Nazis, Japs, Indians and dragons that Carter has liver pills. Every kid worth his salt required a fort. The fall was a bonanza of fort wall material. Leaves could be piled mountain high. Sadly, leaves do not stop walnuts. Don't ask me how I know that. I think it's safe to say we all had more play time with the box than the toy that came in it.

[Manwithnoname]

I have probably killed more Nazis, Japs, Indians and dragons that Carter has liver pills. Every kid worth his salt required a fort. The fall was a bonanza of fort wall material. Leaves could be piled mountain high. Sadly, leaves do not stop walnuts. Don't ask me how I know that. I think it's safe to say we all had more play time with the box than the toy that came in it.

Heck yeah!! Why we always had our 760's, our area was overrun with boggy creek monsters

One of those late night AM radio shows was like Twilight Zone and we both of course had seen Legend of Boggy Creek at the theater.

[Batch]

We made all kinds of forts also. Tree forts, underground forts, we would run and dive over the top of tall sedges and then mat the center area down. Then crawl a spiral route out so as to leave no obvious entrance. These were in an old bean field and it was just north of our street with a ruderal buffer area of mainly thick Brazilian pepper trees. We could instigate our friends to chase us and we'd run through the trails through the Brazilian pepper trees and it was only about 10 yards to our sawgrass fort. We would dive head first over the walls and roll onto our backs and just lie as quite as we could while our friends ran the trail going right by us.

We thought we were ninjas! LOL

Then we built a tree fort on an island of sorts. You could almost jump and definely use a rope to swing across the water to the north and east of the island. But, it was over 100' wide on the south and a little narrower than that on the west. We called the island Gilligan's Island back then. We dragged what ever lumber we could scavenge from construction dumpsters and swam it across the 100' to the island.

The fort was not as impressive as some of the other tree forts we built. Though none were really all that impressive, truly. But we had rope swings over the water, into the water and we had a pirates plank out over the water.

Once, as I was swimming a sheet of plywood over I noticed a very large alligator swimming right toward me. I tried my damnedest to stand on that plywood. But, it just sank under my weight. The gator kept coming until it got pretty close and then it hit the breaks like it just realized there was a great big spas human on a piece of plywood. And then it casually swam around and past me.

We took the longer northern route to 441 and walked back that day. LOL

[Rick]

Once, as I was swimming a sheet of plywood over I noticed a very large alligator swimming right toward me.

That is just so wrong. So very, very wrong. You can borrow my list if you want.

[LowKey]

Growing up was just a series of one fort after another. And looting each other's forts for building material.
Unfortunately any fort we built on the ground one of the dogs would get into and invariably wretch up some awful evil smelling puke. Tree forts were the best.

Building materials came from the mixed blessing of house construction in the neighborhood. Those dumpsters were treasure troves after the workers left.

The only unbreakable rule, ''do not leave dad's tools outdoors.'' He also supplied us with a huge assortment of nails kept in bins beside the tool box.