Leif and the Paper Boat

Leif is full of ideas. He is twelve, he designs board games in his notebook, and he once built a working marble run out of toilet-roll tubes that went down two flights of stairs.

So you might think the Stretch move, adding a new idea to a little kid’s game, would be his easiest.

It wasn’t. Not at first.

The first time Leif tried it, a girl called Ana, who was five, was playing with a bowl of water at the sink table, swishing her hand around. Leif saw his chance.

“Let’s make a harbour!” he said. “We can build a dock out of blocks, and boats out of paper, and the sponge can be an island, and we can make a lighthouse, and there could be pirates…”

Ana looked at him, looked at the water, and wandered off to the dressing-up box.

Leif was puzzled. They were good ideas. They were brilliant ideas.

“How many did you give her?” asked Sola, who had seen the whole thing.

Leif counted on his fingers. “Five,” he said. “Maybe six.”

“How many could she carry?”

Leif thought about how it would feel if someone poured six ideas on top of his game. He’d feel like it wasn’t his game any more.

The next Saturday, Ana was back at the water bowl, swishing. Leif sat down and swished too, for a while. That was Following. Then he folded a small paper boat, the simplest kind, and set it on the water.

Just one boat. One small idea.

Ana watched it float. She poked it. It bobbed. She laughed and poked it again, harder, and it tipped over and got soggy.

“Oh no,” said Leif. “Poor boat.”

“It’s a fish now,” said Ana. “It’s swimming.” She pushed the soggy paper under the water and made it swim around.

Leif’s first instinct was to say “No, it’s a boat, let’s make another one.” He didn’t. He’d added his one idea. Now it was Ana’s turn.

“What does the fish eat?” he asked.

“Bubbles,” said Ana, and blew bubbles into the water with a straw.

They played for twenty minutes. There was no harbour, no lighthouse, no pirates. There was a paper fish that ate bubbles and lived in a bowl and, later, had a party. Leif hadn’t planned any of it. All he’d done was add one thing.

That’s the Stretch move. Little kids’ games can get stuck going round in the same circle. A small new idea, one block, one prop, one “what if?”, can stretch the game a bit further. But it has to be small, and it has to fit their game. Then you follow wherever they take it, even if they turn your boat into a fish.

Leif has a rule he tells the new Sidekicks.

“One idea. Then hands off. If they don’t want it, that’s fine. If they change it, that’s even better. It means it’s theirs now.”

He still designs huge board games in his notebook. But at the water bowl, he has learned to think small.

One paper boat. Then see where they take it.