Simple toys

I don't think there is a rule that once you start a blog you have to tell anyone about it, or write a post every day, is there? 

I will take that silence as a "no"

Autumn can't come soon enough. The long, dragging, seemingly endless summer vacation has, in fact, ended. Although I still think it's so strange that in this part of the country children go back to school in the middle of August. It doesn't seem right. Going back to school should be accompanied by crisp mornings requiring  a sweater, shorts should be replaced by trousers or wooly tights and skirts. The heatwave we are currently experiencing here in Kansas is entirely unsuited to a return to classrooms and homework. 

Yet here we are. 2nd Grade has begun and A is THRILLED!! The only problem so far is that the first two days have been half days. As he said yesterday "Three months and one week of vacation and then the first two days we don't get to stay all day??? Let's get this thing rolling!" The fact that he knows the exact length of the vacation is my doing, I am sure.  It seems a little cruel to have had the crazy start of school experience and then have all three children here from 11:15. Filling three months of summer is not easy, especially when many days were either too hot or too rainy (unusual for where we live) to play outside.

So today I decided that I should take advantage of an offer from our local toy store and collect our free "Creativity Cans". They were designed to address the problem of children becoming less creative in their thinking and doing. I know from our experience that something like Lego, surely a toy geared towards a child's soaring imagination if ever there was one, has mutated in the 21st century into a total nightmare toy. Marketing of the large building sets is very effective and aged five, like many of his friends, A was desperate to get some Lego City buildings. He DID love putting them together, following the instructions, and was pleased with the finished outcome. But...it's LEGO. Unless you're going to glue it together, these buildings are not too sturdy. A piece comes off here, another there, and now the door won't open properly. Only a flat 4 piece with a hook thingy on the end is going to work, and no, we can't find it. I have learned that my child is not alone in being stressed out by the imperfections that start appearing once the toys are actually played with. So we stare at these super expensive models and no one is playing with them. Take a trip to Grandma's house and he can't wait to get into the big tub of plain lego pieces his dad used to play with. "Look! It's a race car" (looks vaguely like a race car) "Do you see this? It's a missile launcher!" (again, in a vague way). Lego has become a bad four letter word in our house. 

We are now on a mission for toys that inspire, not shut down, creativity. This promotion by our toy store was meant for us! 

Check out the Creativity Can 

WOW!! When they opened up their cans my children were stumped by the lack of instructions. Then, I was fascinated to see the difference between them. Maybe it's due to gender, maybe to birth order, maybe it's just their personalities. K dived in and started making all kinds of creations - some identifiable, some not, but she loved it. A looked faintly horrified and then started picking up the pieces and examining them. He tried a few things that didn't work and looked like he was about to give up. Then I told him that the information on the can said you could use other things, so I gave him a few things from our own craft supplies. Then he was off, making a toy guitar. They had such a good time and I realised that the inventors of this product are correct, our children ARE rarely given the chance to just sit and create. I love that I found this in the same month as we started making some changes to their toys.

Next step is another purge of the toy cupboards, boxes, and shelves. We did this once before we moved to our new house but it's high time we did it again. Last Christmas we pulled back considerably on the number of gifts our children received, both from us and from others. We went for magazine subscriptions, or things for their bedroom as alternatives. We loved the effect it had on them

Now that I am reading this over, I think this is probably two or three blog posts all rolled into one. However, since I assume that few people will ever read this, I think that's just fine.

Witching hour

Most parents I know are familiar with the "witching hour" - that awful time in the evening before Dad gets home when everyone is hungry, Mom is trying to get dinner ready, no-one is getting along (of course I'm talking about the dad-at-work/mom-at-home scenario because this is my reality). So tonight I tried something different and was encouraged by the results. Obviously, it's a one night thing, so who knows what tomorrow might bring....

I established the baby somewhere safe with a large selection of entertaining toys. He tends to gravitate toward the oven and dishwasher in our open plan kitchen - living room, so this doesn't exactly make for easy meal preparation. In fact, if you want to see him speed-crawl all you have to do is open the dishwasher. He's there in a flash, body-boarding on the opened door. Then, I sent A and K upstairs. They were instructed to get their clean pajamas out for the night, pick up anything off the floor and generally get their rooms ready for the night. I also asked someone to get a nappy (diaper) and some pjs out for J. A wanted to be helpful and offered to do it, K wanted to do something that A was not doing so loudly volunteered her services. In his peace-keeping capacity A relented and they both went upstairs.

Spaghetti was drained, bowls were placed on the table, napkins located. They came back downstairs, beaming with pride at their newly prepared rooms and....everything was calm. I will be trying this experiment again!