Kids Archives
September 19, 2005
Tooth note
You're seven. You lose a tooth and then – uh oh – you lose that tooth. What do you do? Naturally, you write the tooth fairy an explanatory note...
June 22, 2005
Hard play
I've been meaning to blog this for while. Russell thinks 'soft play' is "one of those things that's better than it used to be" and I see what he means but I'm not so sure. I'm a pretty involved dad and I spend a fair amount of my time in a local soft play area and I'm definitely ambivalent about these things. Half the time (I suppose while I'm drinking a frothy coffee and reading the paper I hopefully brought with me) I think they're pretty cool and a bit or a liberation for harassed 21st Century parents and the other half of the time (while I'm loitering by the spongy slide thing, trying to prevent injury, for instance) I think they're a kind of kiddie hell where you pay (through the nose) for pleasures that used to be free.
It's a very natural instinct of capitalists everywhere to 'add value' – to transform something that already exists by refining or enhancing it so you can charge more for it, at least for a while, until your precious improvement becomes the norm. So I guess it was inevitable that clever businesspeople would 'add value' to old-fashioned play by offering a secure place with reasonable coffee and no obvious sharp edges and charging for it. I remain to be convinced, though, that our kids are going to benefit, ultimately, from spending time (and cash money) in video-monitored, time-limited, rule-governed, air-conditioned play places like these. I'm not going to idealise my own childhood – which was an ordinary, working class 1960s sort of affair – but these ultra-confined play facilities are the polar opposite of the free-range play of our youth and that must influence our kids' image of the world. Are we producing a generation of agoraphobics?
February 11, 2005
Xmas toys: good and bad. Number 5 – The Giants and The Joneses audiobook by Julia Donaldson
Julia Donaldson has written some of our favourite kids' books – The Gruffalo, The Snail and the Whale, Room on the Broom and loads more – all beautifully-written. The Giants and The Joneses is aimed at a slightly older age group than these but the brilliant (unabridged) CD audiobook, read by Helen Lederer, is one of the rare stories that will keep our 6 year-old boy and our 5 year-old girl happy at the same time (and it's over three hours long so it'll keep them amused for quite a long ride in the car).
January 29, 2005
My idea of heaven
Spending a really golden morning with my 5 year-old daughter Billie (she's off school recovering from something called Winter Vomiting Virus – nice), reading stories, playing snakes & ladders, making a Balamory collage and listening to the really quite amazing Last FM.
January 27, 2005
Xmas toys: good and bad. Number 4 - The Rainbow Art Set
Now this is rubbish. You had toys like this when you were a kid. It's an absolute classic I-want-one-of-those exploitation toy (toysploitation?). Paint colours that are supposed to stay separate and pristine mix to form... brown, the 'non-drip' brushes drip all over the place and are impossible to keep clean, colours are thin and nasty, the creative limitations of painting everything in rainbow colours soon become evident and, well... I hate it. A non-toy (as seen on TV).
January 24, 2005
Xmas toys: good and bad. number 3 - The Incredimobile RC car
This one looked unpromising. I don't need to tell you that 90% of movie tie-in toys are depressing play-once-and-discard rubbish and I found it difficult to believe that a plastic RC car could buck the trend (much as I loved The Incredibles) but, dear reader, I was wrong. It's chunky (doors close nicely, roof snaps on and off properly), it's well put together, quite fast and fun to play with – it comes with a nice bendy Mr Incredible toy and has good sounds too (although everything has good sounds these days doesn't it?). Oliver has played with it... ooh... ten times? Fifteen times? That makes it a big hit in our house.
And while you're thinking about it, tell me why this one is different. Can there really be two models? One for the US and one for Europe?
January 14, 2005
Xmas toys: good and bad. Number 2 - The Playmobil Airliner
Engineered like a Mercedes, the Playmobil Airliner is really a parent's toy. Everything snaps together with the kind of satisfying click that only the Germans can manage. The thing comes with a tiny plastic and steel tool that looks like it belongs in the boot of an SL. The interior has cup holders with stacking cups and a proper, scary-looking German stewardess. The design is spartan European and hyper-detailed – nothing is half done, flashy or unsatisfactory. Playmobil is Lego for anal retentives (although, I suppose, Lego is Lego for anal retentives...). Anyway, less is more.
January 10, 2005
Xmas toys: good and bad. Number 1 - Geomag Panels
How's this for topical? A Xmas entry in mid-January! Every year we buy a small mountain of toys for our children and about half of them turn out to be total rubbish. Of the rest, though, several always turn out to be real gems and I feel it's my solemn duty to let you know which ones have kept me the kids amused in the critical post-Xmas fortnight and which are already down at the hospice shop.
We're already Geomag fans round here (they seem to have a cult following and many imitators) so we were pretty excited when they launched a line of little plastic panels in various shapes to snap into your magnetic constructions. These panels are very simple but really add to the pleasure of assembling the fantastically chunky, snappy, clicky Geomag rods and balls into pointless geometric shapes.
This is an impossibly satisfying toy, providing the kind of fingertip pleasure you just can't get from Stickle Bricks. The plastic-coated Geomag rods are North-South magnets that you 'stick' together or join using shiny, nickel balls to form intricate, self-supporting, 3D structures. These panels allow you to give your skeletons lovely translucent walls and edges and fins and windows. Neat.
December 13, 2004
Trying to keep it together...
I give you a snapshot of the pre-Xmas domestic disarray round here. I'm feeding the kids Friday evening and notice that the pretty little red plate that I've given to Rosie for her fish fingers is actually a frisbee (an Incredibles frisbee in fact).
November 01, 2004
What are they on about?
Fat Cat is a cartoon character with an uncertain grasp of the English language. I think he comes from China, although this notebook and pencil (which come with a pencil case, ruler, pencil sharpener, eraser and a sort of clip thing) was bought in Spain and carries some words in Dutch too. If you click the small pic of the pencil you'll see that the inscription says: "Fat Cat is folksy, easygoing, polite and well-mannered".
October 29, 2004
Wisdom
Driving the kids home from an afternoon out – in the rain – we're listening to Bob Dylan singing A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall... ("I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin'. I saw a white ladder all covered with water. I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken. I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children..." and so on). After a nicely timed pause, Billie (4), says "What does he mean by all that, then?" (Of course, you'll be wanting to click the little self-portrait for a bigger one).
October 26, 2004
Kids love stories more than they love toys
A copy of Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar is sold every 57 seconds. That makes it the best selling kids' book of all time. Who knew? We like it round here, of course, especially the board book, which is indestructible as well as being a gentle, colourful and mesmerisingly-paced treat (Rosa, 18 months, is really enjoying it at the moment) I learnt this and loads more from a nice programme presented by John Hegley about the book on Radio 4 the other day.
Meanwhile, I learn from an article (which you'll need a subscription to see) in The Economist that the retail toy trade is in big trouble, with major players (like Disney) getting out of the business all together and mega-specialists like Toys R Us shutting stores. This all fits my theory that kids are now looking less for the slightly circular thrill of a toy and more for the open and provocative experience of a narrative... Stories are big news, in half a dozen categories, from $1 Billion story-driven movie franchises (Star Wars, Lord of The Rings, Harry Potter, Spiderman...) to epic video games and – you know – those dead tree things kids seem happy to queue all night for when they come out...
September 26, 2004
Santa's little helper
It's the end of September and here's a six year-old boy, an Argos Catalogue and a letter that starts 'Hello Santa' (Santa is helpfully provided with page numbers)...
September 08, 2004
An elephant
Billie, my four year-old daughter, drew this beautiful elephant. That's all I've got to say about it really... (of course, you can click the small pic for a bigger one).
August 29, 2004
Mosquitos
One of our favourite local treats is the shabby but brilliant de Havilland Aircraft Heritage Centre, which everyone knows as the Mosquito Museum. Here they made the first handful of Mosquitos in a hanger disguised as a barn (in case the Germans spotted it) and here they have two beautifully-restored planes and dozens of other de Havilland machines – lots of which you can climb all over – and a fascinating exhibit about the technologically-advanced de Havilland jet engines.
The best thing about the museum, though, is the gaggle of volunteers who run it, restore the planes, make the models and man the shop. They're friendly and passionate and fascinating (and mostly pensioners). If you spot one you should stop him or her and ask about the latest project (they're restoring another Mosquito and a gorgeous Chipmunk trainer and they just finished an amazing Moth Minor).
Half the collection's planes are kept outdoors, so they're pretty grubby and the interiors smell a bit like a forty year-old Morris Minor but where else can you handle the controls of a de Havilland Comet 4 airliner or flick switches in the cockpit of a Sea Venom fighter bomber? Another glorious and strange British weekend treasure. Click the little pics for bigger ones (by the way, the Moth Minor's wings fold so that you can tow it home behind your Bentley). Lots more pics here.
August 21, 2004
Dragon slain?
The Komodo Dragon is the largest lizard in the world, a member of the Monitor family (and quite closely related to snakes). It's been around since before the dinosaurs, runs at over 20km/h and eats 80% of its body weight in one sitting. We love Komodo Dragons (it's only possible to say that in a house that has a six year-old boy in it). They are truly beautiful and awesome creatures. On August 11 (that six year-old boy's birthday – check out the Komodo birthday cake made by his loving mother) we went to see the newly-arrived Komodo Dragons at London Zoo. Ten days later, one of them – the female, Nina, pictured – is dead. We're all heartbroken.
August 02, 2004
Small amusements
Pages like this will one day form a sort of buried stratum from which info-archaeologists will reconstruct the texture of our time – or something. Russell's been photographing those little rocking, beeping, coin-operated amusements they put outside supermarkets (well, anywhere actually). My kids love them, naturally enough, and I can't get away with sitting them on an inoperative machine any more ("yes, that is all it does")...
August 16, 2003
Holiday diversions, part 2
A beautiful Summer evening spent at Carter's gorgeous Steam Fair. Original, often steam-powered fairground rides, lovely painted horses, a proper coconut shy, test your strength, ring toss... and not a video game in sight. They're from Berkshire but they tour the whole South of England in the Summer. Marvelous.
(click the small pics for bigger ones – more pics here).
April 26, 2003
Planet Parent
Juliet's latest Planet Parent column is up at Tigerchild. It's about the remarkable ability of our 4 year-old Oliver to get spontaneously grubby.