Toys:
Weighing Junk vs. Keepers
By Lisa Russell
Kids deserve real stuff to play
with, not pretend things. Why give a child a plastic stethoscope
that doesn’t really allow him to hear his amazing little
heart beating? Why a plastic thermometer that always reads “102”
degrees when the human body changes temperature constantly --
isn’t it amazing that our baseline normal body temperature
can range several degrees? We want a child to discover that! And
imagine how his eyes will light up when he discovers that his
internal (mouth) temperature is different than his underarm temperature.
(Let’s hope that’s as far as the exploration goes!)
Don’t tell me how
to play!
My main toy-choosing criteria is “Does the toy tell you
how to play?” I look for toys that encourage creativity
and allow my child to express himself and solve problems. Visit
any preschool and you will find that the most-used toys are the
ones that fit those criteria.
When I taught pre-school, we’d
rotate to different activity centers throughout the day. The hottest
activities were the giant blocks and the felt board animals and
the arts and crafts table. A few kids liked to zone out on the
computer games, but those games discourage social interaction
and physical/kinesthetic/spatial learning, which is a very important
part of child development in pre-schoolers.
The Barbie dilemma
Was it Montessori or Waldorf that recommended dolls without faces,
so that the children could use the doll to express any emotion?
I do agree that the perpetual smiling cheerful face of Barbie
might express an unreal cheerfulness, but we found the dolls without
faces to be very creepy. A child who can imagine that Barbie is
upset can imagine that she’s frowning.
We play with a lot of Barbie in
our house. I have four daughters, and I just had to accept that
Barbie would be a part of our life. I tried to fight it and decided
I’d rather put the energy somewhere else. The Barbies in
our house are all moms, the Skippers and Kellies are sisters and
we even have a few “baby sister” Barbies. They’re
not all made by Mattel. They are moms and grandmas, they drive
their Corvettes and VW bugs to school, to soccer practice, to
Girl Scouts and to Grandma’s house but never to the mall.
Most of the Barbies work from home (and get annoyed when their
kids interrupt them on the computer!). There are a few Kens in
the mix who always pop into the game to say “I’m going
to work. I love you … Goodbye!” Occasionally they
come home from work and smother Barbie with kisses.
Our Barbies are almost always naked.
My kids find it annoying to try to stick their arms into the teeny
sleeves and tights. Besides, it isn’t about the clothes,
it’s about the conversations. They’re forever planning
what the Barbies will say to each other and where they will go.
Sometimes the Barbies will sit unattended for hours -- but they’re
not “ a mess.” They’re sleeping or reading or
waiting for someone.
I have decided that our Barbies
are just a way to express my kids’ growing field of social
reference. My six-year-old once asked why all Barbies were shaped
the same. I told her that Mattel was unimaginative and that they
just mold all the bodies in one factory and stick different heads
on each time they make a new one. “Imagine if we were all
shaped like that,” I told her. “They don’t even
have nipples!” she laughed.
So I’ve made peace with Barbie.
I do admit to throwing away her shoes the minute I find them on
the floor (they’re choking hazards). I admit that I deliberately
bought a doll house the Barbies wouldn’t fit into. And I
admit that I erased the Working Woman Barbie CD program
from our computer. Barbie is welcome in my house -- as long as
she follows my rules!
Plays well with children
Some of the most creative gifts our family has enjoyed include:
a set of 25 die cast Hot Wheels cars for my second daughter’s
second birthday (She’s almost 7 and still asks for one of
those rugs that they drive on.)
a box full of funky clothing and jewelry from a second-hand store
a box full of used kitchen utensils and oven mitts, plastic dishes
and silverware
a box full of cardboard tubes from some sort of printing machine
a box full of fabric scraps (my five-year-old sewed herself a
dress, and I let her wear it in public!)
a bunch of books the local school district library was discarding
books
games (board games, card games … especially in the wintertime
when we’re stuck inside more often)
outdoor play stuff (badminton sets, tennis balls and rackets --
our rackets are wooden, $1 rackets from the thrift store, which
work just fine because we don’t know the rules and play
for fun -- jump ropes, baseball bats and balls, lawn bowling,
horseshoes …
gardening stuff (real tools, not the plastic ones that break the
minute you put them in the dirt)
arts and crafts supplies (beads, paints, wooden things, doll hair,
confetti, kits…)
a “doctor” set with syringes (not the needle kind,
the squirting kind you use to rinse an extracted tooth or give
vitamins to your dog), a stethoscope, a blood pressure monitor
with instruction card that tells how to read it, a first aid book,
Band-Aids, an Ace bandage and a hot water bottle.
a bunch of old (ugly or gaudy) Christmas decorations, vases, tablecloths,
etc.
Resources
Here are a few companies that sell toys that you might not throw
away.
Dick
Blick Art Supplies
Fun Tapes
Radio Flyer
wagons
ISeeMe.com
Zoobooks
© Lisa Russell
Lisa Russell runs
an eclectic homeschooling and parenting web site at LisaRussell.net.
