Ten Favorite toys!

I’ve been thinking about Simone and Naomi’s favorite toys.

1.) A horse tire swing ($79.99)  We’ve tied this swing to a zip line across our living room and use it everday.  Sheets get thrown over the zip line to create a scrim for plays and when the horse gallops onto the set…in it swings.

2.) A CONSTRUCTION BOX that consists of a canvas bag of assorted wood pieces, four clamps, fancy paper, felt, wood glue and various do dads that can be made into doll house furniture.  The local lumber yard gave us bags to fill up with free scrap wood (you can also get that from enasco for $3.75) then I ordered bags of little wood turrets and other turnings and wood shapes. To date the girls have made a swing set, two minaret enhanced bookcases, a sculpture for the front yard of their doll house, a bunk bed, a garage, a water trough for the animals in their wood barn and a little tent for camping out.  If you have older kids, this Doll House Woodcraft Kit would be appropriate.

I have helped out with a hot glue gun now and then…but most of the time the girls use wood glue. They love playing with their WOODEN DOLL HOUSE and WOOD BARN and often start-out doing that and then migrate over to the “construction box” to build something they decide they need for a particular scene in that day’s doll drama.

3.) Snap Circuits PRO. This is an amazing toy!  Stop the presses for this one!  We all love playing with this and every time we have playdates, Simone takes her friends over to it and explains how you can snap pieces together to make dynamically working electric circuits.  The instructions are easy and everything is color coded.  Even 3 year old Naomi could put together the first book of 100 projects. We made fans, an FM radio, lights that are voice or clap activated and various spacey noises and we’ve ad libbed to create a vibration detector and oscillated strobes and used battery or solar power for these and various switches.  There is a great deal to learn and with each project the workbook succinctly sums up the lessons learned. Various kits, all worthwhile ranging from $10.99 to $72.51.  We did the giant box and will clearly be working on the 750 projects till the saints come marching in.  We could have easily started with the Elenco Snap Circuits Jr. 100-in-1 that is $30 dollars and upgraded as we complete each series of projects.

We learned about Snap Circuits Pro from Debbie Dubrow and Peyman Oreizy.  Their kids, Everest (5), Darya (3) and Eilan (1) were gathered around the snap circuits board when we were over there for a playdate.  I can’t thank them enough.  It is such a powerful way to learn how electrical circuits run the everyday devices we’re familiar with as well as allow us to invent some of our own. (Yes, I have as much fun playing with this as my kids do.)

4.) The K’Nex Super Swing was a ton of fun to build and we love that K’Nex works well with legos so we were able to build out the seats of the motorized swing and add lego people and clowns and doll up the final creation to our hearts content.  As with all K’Nex sets, after you build the design, you can take it apart and create an infinite number of other motorized structures as the gears in this kit are especially versatile to play with. I do think this was a bit complicated which is why this is a parent and child project.  This kit was $20.99.

5.) Ellyn Hennecke and Bob Nelsen came over for dinner a couple weeks ago and brought boxes and boxes of Playmobile kits.  We had never checked these toys out.  What a surprise. Simone and Naomi play with them for hours and hours.  We brought them with us on our holiday trip to Mexico and again they were rich foder for daily make-believe stories.  I love listening as the stories unfold.  Often Simone lays out the parameters, “Naomi you are this boy and he is little and needs a lot of help but he does know how to fish. You can also be this pirate.”  “I’m going to be these five ladies over here with all this stuff.”  We managed to put almost everything inside the take along box when we headed to Mexico and it was great.

Here is some of what Ellyn and Bob brought over!  It was truly amazing!

Playmobil My Take Along Princess Fantasy Set
Playmobil Animal Vet Operating Room
Mighty World Marine Research Unit
Playmobil 4254 Royal Nursery

6.) Thrift shop wedding dresses with veil.  Yes exactly that..and a pair of sharp shears, threaded needles, as, of course, quite a few alterations were needed.  It looks sketchy at this point…but I can tell this will continue to get lots of use.  This is the latest addition to our overflowing DRESS-UP CHEST.

7.) Magna-Tiles are a bunch of colorful isosceles triangles, equilateral triangles, right triangles and squares of various sizes.  All of these go together to create two-dimenstional and three-dimensional structures. These work for nearly any age as they are indestructible.  They come in opaque or transparent colors and work with another magnetic building toy called Magformers.   Magformers have a few more shapes, diamonds and hexagons, rectangles and are not solid so they can be the windows for the Magna-tele creations.  This toy is a bit heavy to take on a trip but we did bring them to the Hamptons last year and they were endlessly fun to design with.

8.)  Our mobile painting kit.  This small red round suitcase has been dragged all over.  It has everything the three of us need to set up shop in a park, at an outdoor table, or on the deck. Inside the suitcase is the following: