Slashdot Mirror
Thought-Provoking Gifts For Young Kids?
An anonymous reader writes "Societal norms and my sibling's procreative endeavors have put me in the position of having to buy gifts twice a year for young children. What makes them happy are unremarkable bits of plastic. They already have innumerable unremarkable bits of plastic (from their parents and grandparents). My preference would be to get them gifts that challenge them to think creatively (or at least to think), which they'll be able to pick up and enjoy even after they outgrow their train/truck/homemaking fetishes. Beyond the Rubik's Cube, what thinky toys from your childhood are still in production? What new thinky toys have you discovered that work for the 5–10 age range?"
How about books? I know it's not the latest high tech doodad but I would of loved to have gotten more books as a child.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsela
Paper, pencil, paintbrushes.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
unremarkable bits of plastic... I had Lego when I was a kid too, and it was great - helped my imagination in a constructive way - no use thinking about spaceships unless you could put one together from little blocks.
Today, we have Lego mindstorm - robot lego with software controllers. For something that was enjoyable and improving back then, and enjoyable and improving now is pretty cool.
Don't know about modern stuff (which I know is what you asked about) and may not be within the age range (I really have a hard time envisioning age) but the classics like meccano and K'nex (if you don't like picking up billions of mini nuts and bolts) were great.
Looking back, I learnt a lot about structure (triangles, width to height ratios etc) and gear ratios just as a side effect of messing around.
I can't be the only one who as a kid one day realized that if you hook a small gear to a large drive gear.. the small gear turns faster! Then tried to make a massive tower of alternating large/small gears.. only to discover that when you get to the top.. you have a fast spinning gear that can barely drive the weight of it's own axle.
Nor the only one who tried to make a crane, only to realize that the second you attach a load, the whole thing crumbles .. seems pretty simple as an adult .. but learning that as much force is applied to the structure as the load was pretty neat at that age.
AND of course, eventually everyone builds a crossbow .. those elastics that came with K'nex were pretty damn sturdy.. making something that could punch a hole in a piece of paper from across the room wasn't too difficult. Then trying to come up with a trigger mechanism was great fun.. and more lessons on the whole force/structure thing.
Aside from "mechanical" toys.. there are also electrical.
Not sure of the age range, but when I was a kid my dad made me what was basically a board with a power source, some lights, switches, and some other odds and ends. It had contacts (bolts) and a bunch of alligator clips for connecting the stuff. I had a lot of fun playing with it, and I've seen commercial versions of this now.. so might be a good idea. Also rates high on the "learning without realizing" category.
I actually still like the little plastic blocks. I think that's what started or at least cultivated many an engineer's interest in the trade. Just get them a box with mixed blocks and they'll keep it for their kids when they grow up. My parents gave me 1 small kit when I was young (back when they had less custom blocks - the newer series are actually going back to those roots it seems) and then whenever I got some cash or gifts for good report cards I would expand until by 16 years old I got a whole city that took up the whole attic.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Perhaps I'm atypical, but I absolutely loved my "150 in one" electronic kit. Here is a pic of the exact same kit I had when I was 8. I built every project, and came up to plenty of my own little circuits. I don't know what the modern equivalent is nowadays - perhaps heavier on the digital / logic side?
Better known as 318230.
Thought-Provoking? Check.
Unremarkable bit of plastic? Check.
They'll be able to pick up and enjoy even after they outgrow their train/truck/homemaking fetishes? Check.
Won't have to pick out gifts twice a year after this? Check.
I still remember the lovely combination of little tiny nuts and bolts.. and deep carpeting.. and the sound it made going into vacuum cleaner!
Seriously, right after Legos, a big heap of good old fashioned woods blocks were the best. Building towers, cities, etc is the best.
Giant refrigerator sized cardboard boxes too.
Get them a playhouse, and not a plastic one. Draw up plans, precut the pieces, and have them help you assemble it. Playhouses are a blank slate for childhood adventure to paint upon.
Growing up is about "turning into something you're not". Otherwise you'd stay a child forever.
While the submitter does seem like a troll with his "unremarkable bits of plastic" thing, he does have a point that if everyone is giving them the same thing then (a) they are all trying to turn them into the same thing they are not (e.g. gun wielding/fire truck driving men) and (b) the children haven't had a chance to see if they even like anything else.
It's a risk thing too. You can give them the same thing as everyone else and they will thank you. Or you can give them a Rubik cube, a set of Lego, or something else and there's about even odds that they'll play with it for a day and forget about it, or they might start playing with it and you'll hear from their parents months later that they didn't drop it ever since.
These are children you're talking about. Give them a great big expensive toy and they'll end up playing with the box for hours instead.
Shuriken!
What, not thought-provoking enough?
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
What about one of these?
http://www.cracked.com/article_18494_15-unintentionally-perverted-toys-children_p2.html
Some of the most fun I had as a child was when I had the raw materials to do something- and conversely often the biggest frustration was a lack of materials.
Wood, rope, large cardboard boxes, tape, etc. Strangely rope seemed to always be in short supply. Hammer and nails. Much learning occurs when idle hands are armed with stuff :)
And actually I think the best gift you can give is time. One of the best times I had with one of my young nephews was building a swing- just your simple board and two ropes off a tree limb swing. We discussed how big the seat needed to be- actually measured some assorted butts!, how big the rope needed to be, we measured and cut, learned about knots, tied the whole thing up, and it got a lot of use for years. The designing, acquiring materials, building, overall a simple but enjoyable project with an immediate return, and a template for many other projects.
Later projects were a potato cannon, tree fort with crows nest, for-real play house (including wiring in outlets, windows, insulating, basically a small guest-house)... we spent an afternoon pulling cat5 to all the rooms in their house and putting in a router... soldered up a pong game and a couple other odd electronics kits. Next up may be firearms if I can get the parents to buy into that :)
Time, encouragement, and patience are incredibly valuable and are remembered. Not easy if they're far away or too busy with all the distractions kids have these days. Maybe my entire comment is out of date in today's world. ?
Buy them porn...When I was a kid, I found it to be remarkably educational.
Or, for really young kids, buy something really cool and BIG for yourself and give the kids the box. They will have more fun making that into a fort/dollhouse than all the paints and paper in the world.
Parents today often use writing/drawing as calm down methods, and the kids start looking at it as punishment. But at least these are creative devices, rather than passive entertainment devices. Kids bore quickly. Let them build the fort, then draw the fort.
Nothing with batteries.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
just to see what they'll come up with
A crippling fear of electricity and computers!
On top of Lego, K'NEX are pretty amazing pieces of construction material. As a kid, I started training with the basic sets, then got into the "master" sets.
I bought myself a K'NEX set called "The big ball factory," and some other sets of spare parts. My computer geek / engineer colleagues came over one night for a few to many beers. Everyone had a plan one how to improve the damn thing. There were four folks working in parallel on different sections at once, and showed no intention of stopping, and lost all track of time . . . just like what happens when you do hard core coding.
My girlfriend quipped to the other girlfriends, that if the beer didn't run out, she would have to chase them all out with a broom. Most of the girlfriends found the behavior "cute", especially since with every improvement, one of the guys would run to his girlfriend, and say, "Look, Romy, at that thing that I just built!"
When the folks were leaving, one of the chicks said, "I'm glad that these toys are in your apartment, and not in mine."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Timecube. Four toys in a single toy box.
Try being the "fun uncle" instead of the "odd uncle who's always trying to make them into something they're not."
I did that "fun uncle" thing, and showed my nephew what you could make out of ammonia and iodine crystals (nitrogen triiodide, NI3) and postassium percholrate, aluminum powder and sulfur.
How did that story end? He is applying to grad school to get his Ph.D. in chemical engineering. He got an 800 on his math GRE, so things look good.
He lives on another continent than I, but the last time I visited for Christmas, he gave me a book titled, "Backyard Ballistics."
I never got the chance to show him how folks at Princeton's eating clubs peppered other eating clubs with water ballons launched from funnelators (giant sling-shots, made with surgical tubing). Some folks that I don't know, and don't know me planned to launch a few at George Bush, Senior, when he visited the campus in 1984. Those folks that I didn't know changed their minds, when Secret Service folks showed up on the rooftops of the eating club.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
When I was a kid, my dad would often tell me that if I do well in school, he would pay for my college, and if I don't, he would buy me a giant shovel, the kind they use on the farm to move cow manure for my 18th birthday. He would also take me to my grandfather's farm every now and then, just so that I'd see those shovels getting used.
I never got the shovel. I choose the path which implied a six figure income instead. So one could say that even though the shovel never materialized, it was pretty thought provoking.
Worked at Radio Shack many winters ago, and a lady came in and said, "I want your loudest, most obnoxious guns, and a whole bunch of your longest-lasting batteries."
I said, "This sounds like revenge. What did they do to you?"
"My brother bought my kids the popcorn popper on a stick last year." The brother deserved it completely, IMO.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin