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IHE OSHAWA DAILY TIMES, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 12, 1928 PAGE THREE ea... : The Magic in Playthings La a Ea a a a Ed) aid Si di i © For two' or three weeks before Joe's sixth birthday Mr, Carter had seen mysteriously busy, Every night Joe was put to bed half an hour sarlier than usual, and as soon as the door' was closed on him, his father began to hammer and saw and bore and scrape, 3 Mr. Carter was building a toy house, and although he complained to Mrs. Carter and the neighbors that it was hard work, he really was hav ing a wonderful time, The toy house had windows and doors that opened, an inside stairway with a balustrade, real electric lights on a switch, linol- eum on the floors, wallpaper, window cuftains, window- boxes, two chimneys --gvery realistic touch that Mr, Car- ter could think of. He painted it in three colors, three coats of each, At last the great day came, Joe was led into the overwhelming pres- ence, He seemed very pleased at first, He switched the lights on and oft a few times, and opened and shut the doors and windows, Half an hour later Mr, Carter, rising from the breakfast table, was surprised to find Joe down on the floor building a tower with an old box of battered blocks. 'Mr, Carter was distinctly grieved, To sit and look at a beautiful toy house is not play, Children like activity, They like to make and do things. They like to take things into their hands and feel them, manipul- ate them--see whether they are light or heavy, hard or soft, rough or smooth, Children like to see how things act. They stroke the cat to hear it purr and perhaps dig it in the ribs to see it run excitedly away ~this is play. Perhaps the mistake most frequent- ly made in selecting toys for children Is that they are not simple enough for their age and abilities, Too often a six-year-old boy gets a ten or eleven- year-old game, and the result is that he is either bored, or actually puzzled or discouraged, To be sure, there are materials that appeal to children over a period of years, Simple blocks are like this, and clay and sand or any other. plastic material, out of which the child can make things, But they are exceptional,. Most toys have p definite age appeal and it is im- portant to remember that. There is no age, however, at which most mechanical toys are worth while, A monkey dancing on a pole, a man turning somersaults on a trapeze, 3 cat that chases its own tail--these have no virtue and substance as play- things, The child turns the crank and watches what happens, But the mean- Ingless trick becomes boring after a few performances, The child has con- tributed nothing to the toy, and if he contributes nothing he soon loses in- terest, There is, perhaps, something to be said for certain mechanical toys for older children. An auto truck or an engine, which functions when wound up, may become the centre of wider activities, The child can build gar- ages, service stations, roads, repair shops, street corners with signal lights, traffic signs and other things around his toy automobile, often dis- playing a surprising knowledge of modern civilization, Around his engine he can build railroad. tracks, stations, freight de- pots, yards--even towns, I have seen children occupy the floor of a whole room with complicated layouts, all starting from a single engine, They even tunnelled a mountain, first building the mountain with rugs, To take a toy apart, even to smash it to bits, is not necessarily a wanton act, There can be an element of play in such destruction. The mere desire to manipulate may be at the bottom of it--or curiosity, an impulse to see what makes the toy work, fre- quently misunderstood &ause of des- truction is the simple fact that the child can do nothing else with the toy --it has no use and yet the child is determined to get some use out of it, Then, too, we must remember that he likes to make things happen; he likes to be a cause, An unusually intelligent mother of my acquaintance came home one day with a cheap alarm clock from the store and said to her son: "Here, Herbert, take this apart if you want to" He spent many a happy hour with that clock, putting its wheels to- gether in all sorts of ways. Children can be introduced grad- wally to more and more complicated aspects of play, Suppose your child has a toy cow, He had done all things he can think of with it, and for its uses are exhausted. Now body gives him a barn--and th¢ ani- mal takes on new life, Present}y your child is storing hay in the barn for his cow, taking the cow to pretending to milk her, be down at night and so fol But the attitude of parchts as they introduce a new toy to 4 child may discourage him, 1 have seen parents give their children a set of blocks, and then start right in building with the blocks, By the time the father had erected a magnificent tower, far outshining anything the child could do, the child was disheartened, If properly introduced, any job of simple cunstruction seems good play to a child of any age, Tom Saw- yer's achievement in getting all the neighbor's boys to whitewash the fence for him never seemed to me quite the difficult exploit it was cracked up to be. Whd wouldn't en. joy splashing white paint over a high board fence? One of the most successful toys I ever saw was a basket of small kit- chen utensils, The child who owned them was only a year and a half old, and to him they were a marvelous collection of fascinating objects, 0 There are other household articles that make splendid toys for very young children, A string of empty spools, the rubber stopper from the bath-tub, are fine toys for a small child; so are the clothes-pins, the the lid of a mason jar, a tin plate or pan--anything that is attractive either in shape or material and with which he cannot hurt himself, Chil- dren can be let in on household act- ivities. also, Most children like to shell peas, and cut the dough into shapes. They are not only being use- ful, but they like the feel of the ma- terial, Even for a cake of laundry soap there are uses other than blow- ing bubbles. A small child will pound nails into a fresh cake of soap, carve out of it, or scratch figures on its surface. Children often have fun making their own toys. I know a boy who, having just finished a boat--crude, to be sure, but still a boat--asked an adult standing near to bend down and then said: "Do you hear the waves washing against it?" This egg he sees mother use in sewing, | o i A ER A eg nmmeeaoeesieses MDE TERRES TE a EE SPORES IONE IRONS REDE INNRES IROL IO NORIO ered / Watch Tomorrow's Issue of the Times for Our Big Annual Christmas DOLLAR DAY SALE - ANNOUNCEMENT The Biggest Bargain Event of the Year i Be lsalosscit iat eisai sate 3 AAA HA tr pt Neti oo POV TCOLS : FER LR ORR ORE SION HRBERGERERRFH VRRRROIBLMNRNRLISIRS child was having a creative experi- ence; he was all but actually at sea in that boat, When a child brings a gift of imagination like this to his toy making, he is having a good time, There are various good play ma- terials on the market, Commerce has begun to catch up with psychology sce, if you have the opportunity, the jungle-gym, This strangely named object is a kind of cage, each side being a series of horizontal bars, one above the other, up which the chil- dren can climb as up a ladder, It is excellent for giving children that free play of leg, arm and body muscles that children in cities so often do not get. It can be made at home or by a good carpenter and is a fine thing to have for a group of children. A short flight of steps is also excel- lent for the development of muscles, and slides are fine for/ vigorous ex- ercise and the development of free- dom in play. The attractiveness of plastic ma- terials is well known, The first child making the first mud pie was per- haps the discoverer of the delights of plastic material, If the house has a back yard, it should contain a sand box. It is excellent training in social play, because children have to share it with others, Next to clay and sand, blocks are perhaps the most serviceable toys, They have an advantage over clay in that they are mot messy, But it is important to select blocks suited to the child's. age and not too small. And then there are toys that en- courage sicentific experiment, like the magnet, magnifying glass, globe of the world, scales, a mariner's com- pass, and so forth. Even simple mea- suring instruments, like graded cups] and rulers, are enjoyable to many children, For many years the dolls on the market were very unsatisfactory. Now, however, more desirable ones can be bought, A rag doll, making no pretensions to fineness or expen- sive clothing, is much preferred by many children to the elaborate dress- ed-up dolls displayed in many shop windows, and there are splendid new dolls of hardwood, and of cloth, to be had. Few good toy animals are on the market. Here is a field for enterpris- ing manufacturers. Single animals, made either of a composition ma- terial or cut from wood, can be bought, but it is. hard to find sets of animals matching in size and pro- portion ; you are likely to get a lami as large as a lion or a dog the size of an elephant, Toys ought to- be sturdy, simple, useful--and a means rather than an end in themselves. They ought not to discourage a child or be too much for him. And a child supplied with desirable toys is well advanced on the road to conquering the world, Mother (sagely)--You can't eat your eake and have it, ton, you know. Small daughter-- Well, mother, if T want cake just to look at, there's plenty in the baker's window, Short-sighted customer: "Aren't you making your rolls a little larger these days?" Baker: "R-rrrolls! Them's loaves!" Bet AIR us WW - 23 'BULOVA 3 Presented to the Victorious Oshawa Blue D Buy your Bulova at BASSETT On Oshawa's Main Corner