rethinking toys

As I carefully read through the Enki Education Kindergarten curriculum guide, preparing myself for organizing our coming homeschooling year, I've been giving a lot of thought to our toy situation. I've been trying to make better choices this past year as to what my kids do and do not have access to, but I'm finding that the line is not always so black and white as to what is nourishing and what is not.

In the Enki materials, it is stressed that creative play is the most important part of a young child's "curriculum". By creative, they mean imaginative play acting out their experiences, recreating their worlds. This is most easily accomplished via non-specific play materials. A lot of the common kid toys like puzzles and legos have a "right fit" solution -- what the kids need are open-ended toys that welcome imaginative creativity. The idea is for the child to openly explore with their bodies and imaginations, not get sucked into their heads looking for solutions.

Although that sounds like fairly clear criteria (to me at least -- obviously rocks, silks, and other natural materials would inspire the right sorts of play, and puzzles and general "educational games" would cause them to look for solutions), I've found there's a lot of gray lines in looking at the types of toys that are currently in our house.

For instance, in the first photo, Zoo Boy is playing with a set of wood beads that comes with sequence strips -- the way the toy is "supposed" to be used is to use a sequence strip to string the beads onto a wooden rod in the "proper" order. Very in-the-head, limiting type of toy. But that's not how Zoo Boy is using it. He's pretending he's toasting marshmallows over a campfire. A great example of the nourishing type of play we're looking for!

In the second photo, J has built a foot with his Zoobs (a plastic building toy with interconnecting parts), and then drew a picture of the foot. Eventually he built an ostrich to use that foot on, and then erased his picture of the foot and replaced it with a sign that says "the ostrich is here". While this is a lot closer to creativity than how he's traditionally used this toy (just following pictoral directions to assemble things), it's still an activity that is very much inside his head. I've not let it bother me too much to this point, because there were some therapeutic benefits from both the toy itself (which takes quite a bit of effort to put together and take apart, good heavy work from an Occupational Therapy perspective, and also promotes small motor dexterity), and from following directions, which is a pre-reading skill that works on his motor planning difficulties. However, the limiting nature of this type of toy has really been bothering me in recent days. It's something I need to ponder more, as J really enjoys this toy (it's his favorite) and I don't want to strip him of his favorites -- I'm thinking more in terms of limiting access to it.

At the same time, it's also possible for this toy to inspire creativity. Here, J built a "Zoob Dude" by following the directions, but then got creative with it -- he set the dude up in his beanbag chair and gave him a remote control and a "bowl of popcorn" (he put a bunch of yellow zoobs in a plastic container), then claimed that he was watching a movie. Here he's creating a reflection of something that happens in his own world, which is the very definition of creative play.

Here's Zoo Boy playing with some Lincoln Logs. Lincoln Logs is one of those middle-of-the-road toys in my mind. There ARE "right fit" solutions to putting them together, but they aren't as well defined as other building toys (such as legos and zoobs). And at least they are made of a natural material (wood) for the most part (some of the accessories in our set are plastic) -- the fact that the zoobs are plastic is probably the thing that bothers me the most about them (yet at the same time is the reason they are so good for concussive heavy work, natural materials wouldn't hold up to the force required to push them together and pull them apart, although you could find other ways to get that same sort of input without using a toy, like pushing and pulling large rocks and logs). When we got this large set of Lincoln Logs off of Ebay, I threw out all the instructions and pictures of what could be made from it, hoping that would inspire more creative play. It's certainly meant that they have to think and plan more about how to build things, but in the end I think I actually created a situation where they are even more "in their minds" than they would have been if they were following instrcutions. Obviously, avoiding (or at least limiting access) to this type of toy would be a much better plan if I'm trying to encourage creative play. Then again, occassionally the "logs" become drumsticks or the buildings they build come under attack of a giant building-stomping monster, so it's still possible to incorporate quite a bit of creative play too.

Here's some active social play. Zoo Boy hooked up with a couple of other lake-goers recently to join them in a game of tossing a sponge ball around. They had a lot of fun and physical activity, but there wasn't much creativity involved with this. Sports are like that. They inspire something else in the child, and even though they are active while they are doing it (as opposed to sitting absorbed in putting legos together), this does not fill the need for creative play. From the activity perspective, I like this better than assembling with legos, but using this type of play as a "substitute" for creative play would not be appropriate either. There's certainly a place for this type of play, but creative play is absolutely vital. And active creative play is best. So, for instance, when the boys pretend that their playscape is a firestation and they climb up into their "bunk house" to "sleep" until the alarm sounds, then race down the slide to their firetrucks (swings) and race (swing) off to the fire, then scramble back up into the structure (now magically converted from the firehouse to a burning building) with pretend hoses dragging behind them to put out the fire, they are fulfilling that criteria that I'm looking for and that developmentally is so important for them.

I think it's not in the toy itself, it's in how it's used. And that's where my challenge lies in making decisions about what they should and should not have ready access to. My goal is to keep open-ended objects available for play any time-- rocks, wood blocks, seashells, silks, sticks, crayons, clay, and non-specific craft materials -- because these objects, by their own nature, can only be used creatively, so having them as the primary available toys should naturally lend towards more creative play. And then to at least limit the time they have access to more restrictive type toys.

It's a work in progress.