Expensive Toys

[poliphilo]

My mother has to buy a present for her great-grandson, my great-nephew, who is two. I'd been playing with Odi's kids earlier and suggested she give him an empty Kleenex box. The truth is that up to a certain age kids really aren't impressed by toys that come with batteries. Something like the Kleenex box will do just as well. Look, you can put things in it and take them out again,  you can wear it as a hat, you can rip it up...

Remember Eeyore with his burst balloons and empty hunney jar?

Another great game we were playing yesterday afternoon was "throw the ball into the waste paper basket". 

Comments

[ron-broxted.livejournal.com]

Sir, Your post has annoyed me immensely. After 3 yrs in Aussie, I returned with Ma & Pa to Ingerlund, where my paternal Granny was to present me with a suitably posh toy. Aged 7 I thought this a GOOD THING. However upon unwrapping it the bastard Toy Robot was bust as my bastard cousins had "pre enjoyed" it. I will now blame you for the trauma I am plunged into anew. I remain, C Rehill, Esq.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Ah but you were seven. Seven is an age when you can appreciate things like toy robots. The kids I'm talking about are much younger.

[ron-broxted.livejournal.com]

Depends on the 7 year old surely? Anyway good luck with "throw ball into basket". I amused a 4 yr old recently with a magic (invisible) tortoise.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Magical invisible tortoises rock!

[ron-broxted.livejournal.com]

It was an especially bright magic tortoise. I had to draw and colour it after. Thank God I am still good at sketching!

[airstrip.livejournal.com]

Wait. There's an age when battery-powered toys become interesting? My progression was empty boxes and sticks followed by computers. The empty box and stick period ended when no one else cared to play anymore, though, not of my choice. :/

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think I'm too old to have had battery-powered toys. But I did have a train set that plugged into the mains.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

Agreed I thought empty boxes (aka busses, spaceships...) rocked right on up to middle school

[oakmouse]

Look, you can put things in it and take them out again, you can wear it as a hat, you can rip it up...


You can push it along the floor and pretend it's a bus or a tram car, and stop it here and there to add or subtract stuffed animal "riders", thus also amusing the slightly older child... Lots of fun to be had from an empty kleenex box! *g*

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

With very young children anything that isn't dangerous is a potential toy.

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

You are right on, Tony! We used shoeboxes, made them into vehicles, building blocks, doll beds, and a host of other things, as well as storing hundreds of broken crayons in them and other small-but-useful items, each category in its own box. String and tin cans also had a myriad of uses. And sticks? Oh, boy! A stick could become a bat for a ball game in the street, or a weapon for a war game, or a walking stick for a hike in the woods, and more.
You know what? I think we were better off for NOT having too many "real" toys.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

All it takes is a little imagination.

One of the problems with sophisticated modern toys is they do all the heavy lifting for you.

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

Ball in the wastebasket was also a game we played. Also, throwing the ball as high up a blank wall as we could, then trying to catch it in one hand. I got pretty good at it for a while.