Toys

World Changing has an interesting post on the efforts of the Toy industry to stop laws that keep toxic materials out of toys. They also talk about fair trade, non toxic alternative toys.

Now consider a different toy, with a different kind of story to tell. ImagiPlay's AniMates Giraffe Pair game, made only from "Preservative-Free Rubberwood, Non-Toxic Water-Based Paint and/or Lacquer" and crafted in Sri Lanka under fair-trade conditions. All the savannah fun, with a fraction of the apocalypse and childhood illness.

Worth a read.

And make sure to click on the link to the descriptions of how some have perverted the birthday party. Little relevance to nature, but sure to give you a taste of how bad things have gotten in our culture.

Media Notes

A planned museum in North Carolina will connect suburban kids and their environment.

Glendening told me that only 6 percent of children ages 6 to 13 spend any time in outdoor unstructured play per week. Most kids are too busy with scheduled activities or "plugged in" to be outside playing.

The Museum of Life and the Environment will connect the next generation with its surroundings.

More on play and ADHD from the UK.

Are children diagnosed with ADHD simply suffering from play starvation? This disturbing possibility emerges from studies carried out in America over the past 10 years.

Hyper parenting in Canada.

Over-the-top child rearing is nothing new, but it's this latest wave -- 10-year-olds scheduling extracurricular activities with BlackBerrys, teenagers suffering from sports injuries previously only witnessed in professional athletes and a stream of Prozac and Ritalin flowing from the drugstore to lunch boxes -- that's earned the title hyper-parenting.

An OpEd from New Hampshire hits the mark.

It is these connections to nature, the sense of wonder in the moment and the memories that last a lifetime, these are what we need to provide to our children and our children's children. Without real experiences in nature ... the dirty fingernail, smell-the-earth kind ... how will they come to care about preserving the natural world? It is up to us to turn off the television, put aside the mouse, and choose nature with our children, for their future and the future of all life on Earth.

Play

The NY Times Magazine has an interesting article out today on play.

In the end, it comes down to a matter of trade-offs. There are only six hours in a school day, only another six or so till bedtime, and adults are forever trying to cram those hours with activities that are productive, educational and (almost as an afterthought) fun. Animal findings about how play influences brain growth suggest that playing, though it might look silly and purposeless, warrants a place in every child’s day. Not too overblown a place, not too sanctimonious a place, but a place that embraces all styles of play and that recognizes play as every bit as essential to healthful neurological development as test-taking drills, Spanish lessons or Suzuki violin.

Play

Michigan Public Television has a new site up to support their new documentary Where do Children Play?.

Check it out.

Spending Time Unplugged

Ventura County Star reports about unplugging.

"I think they need to use their imaginations," Tamar said of Milai and his siblings, Deacon, 7, and Erskine, 4. "I think my older son is losing sight of his creativity the more he watches TV or sits in front of the computer. He also gets grumpier."

So, every Sunday after church, the screens in the house go dark and it's time for free play. The kids can ocean surf, ride bikes, build Lego empires with the neighbor kids or dream up new games, as long as it's real, unprocessed, unplugged playtime."

The National Institute for Play has more.

Column

Long day today. Here's a column to allow some focus on what really counts.

I went to the woods because I felt free. There were no restrictions on what I did. There wasn’t anybody to tell me no. There were no signs ordering me to stay on the path, keep off the grass. There was no path, just trails made by cows in places. There were fences, extending to the river bank. But they were no limits. I climbed each fence when I came to it, then went on.

Halloween Thoughts

I know Halloween does not have much to do with Conservation, but what I saw the other night was inspiring, and relevant to this dialogue.

A friend of ours in Town sets up his house every Halloween with a graveyard, and flying ghosts, and magically opening gates, and a gorilla in the shadows. Every year it gets more elaborate. We go every year to watch the fun, and this year, it was an astounding spectacle.

Hundreds and hundreds, if not a thousand kids showed up at the house, most with their parents. It was a mild night, and folks were having a blast, outdoors, their imaginations running full tilt.

Especially fun was the local school assistant head dressed up as a ghoul chasing his eighth grade students with a running chainsaw (sans chain). The guy in the gorilla suit scared a few too. Little kids were subjected to less shocking things, and were loving it, outdoors.Older kids were taking turns making the ghosts fly down a long fishline, and other scary tasks, so everyone was had a role and was engaged. It really was something to see.

There was no tv, no computers, no Gameboys, no X-boxes. I suspects at that moment, any one of those kids would have rid themselves of any of those things in exchange for this much fun.

It hit me hard that if we could have activities like this Halloween night once a week, where kids were outside, with their friends and parents, using their imaginations, we would be making some progress.