Play is a great way to teach kids and develop their imagination.  I don’t know if you’ll agree with me but some kids get to learn what they want to be when they grow up by playing games.  When I was growing up, we didn’t have PSP or XBOX then so I would usually play with my cousins.  And since we didn’t have that much toys to play with, we would make our own toys.  The boys will make there own slingshots and toy guns using bamboo sticks and wet paper while the girls and the less violent boys would play “bahay-bahay”.  One of the favorite games that we love to play is building a small community were some kids would have a small business like a restaurant while the others will take on the consumer role.  Before the game starts, we would collect candy wrappers for our play money, collect small pieces of vegetables in the market which we use in the restaurant and gumamela flowers which we chop up and use to color and thicken the water that we use as palamig (a local term for juice in the Philippines). I remember being one of the kids who chops the vegetables into smaller pieces and cooks it on our make shift stove (we use a lamp as a stove and a tin can as our pan). And since we don’t have a lot of toy plates to play with, we would use softdrink caps and crowns as plates and crowns. Hmmm… I guess that’s the reason why I love to cook, dream of becoming a chef and own a restaurant.