A summer vacation bucket list.

I am not a fan of humid summer days. As the humidity starts to creep up, I hibernate. Until I moved to Springfield, Missouri to teach at what was then called Southwest Missouri State University (it has since lost the geographic modifier in the name), I though Virginia was the single most humid place I had ever lived. Not so. Springfield holds the distinction of having the highest annual humidity rate in the country, a fact I discovered my first full summer there. The air was thick, heavy. Natives laughing referred to an afternoon stroll around the block as going out for a swim. Just before the end of my first spring term, a colleague in my department (English) advised me to create a bucket list of indoor activities I always wanted to do, but never had the time. I didn’t take his advise, thinking he had somehow slipped a cog, forgetting that my mother, who was raised in the Kansas Flint Hills did the same thing. By mid-July, as I sat at the kitchen table, squarely in front of the air conditioner, I understood his suggestion. Hot weather is as likely to keep folks inside, seeking cool, as mid-January weather.

Each year, sometime around the end of tax season, I write a summer bucket list. Mine always includes finishing Joachim Johanson and the Pari-mutual Pigs, a novel I started some twenty years ago.

A summer bucket list for kids is one of the best ways to prepare for the inevitable “I’m bored” comments that creep into conversation sometime during the week after July 4th. Sit down one evening before the summer starts and talk to your kids about what they would like to do or learn over the summer. Given that it is summer, the emphasis will probably fall on fun, but don’t overlook the opportunities to strengthen of improve skill sets from the previous school year. We started the “Creative Play” pages on the Cambria Toy Station website to provide parents and kids a variety of activities good for days too cold or hot to allow for lots of outdoor activity. We organized the materials under different subjects to make it easier to find the perfect activity. Most of the activities involve little or no cost (yes, we are a for profit store, but we also recognize that some of the best activities are those that involve stuff you probably already have on hand).

There are some great resources and activities provided by the different Parks and Recreation departments and the public libraries. While the parks and rec departments have yet to release their list of summer activities, check to see what all of them are offering. The parks and rec programs generally require a fee; the public library activities are generally free of charge.  There are three branches of the Montgomery-Floyd Regional Library (MFRL) in Montgomery County: Blacksburg, Christiansburg, and Meadowbrook (Shawsville). MFRL has an excellent calendar available on their website.

Another excellent resource, especially for  adults and kids 12 or 13 and older, is the YMCA at Virginia Tech’s  Open University. They offer a broad range of classes, although most have an emphasis on the arts. The classes do have a nominal fee. Their summer schedule is not yet available, so you may need to check back periodically.

If you are looking for a day or weekend project, stop by the Cambria Toy Station for your art supplies, art and crafts projects, sticker mosaics, and science project and robotics kits and pick up a copy of our “cool things to do this week” newsletter or download a copy on our website.

While you are at it, put your name in the jar of our monthly “$25 gift certificate” drawings (June 1, July 1, and August 1). Also check out our summer “construction” challenge. We are still working out the details, but we should have the kinks worked out by the middle of May, and the details will be announced on the Cambria Toy Station website.

(mhd)

Great toys are toys that change with a child’s imagination, that allow for adaptive reuse. Toys, especially toys that allow for the flexibility of imagination and use, rarely stay as they were originally intended. It is the beauty of both a child’s imagination and a parent’s willingness to allow uses to go beyond those that were predetermined by the object or the object’s creator.

When I was five, my mother took time away from making miniatures for collectors to make a dollhouse for me for Christmas.  It was by all measures a magnificent dollhouse with wallpapered walls, hardwood floors, and Victorian furniture. At the time, she was building a reputation as a miniaturist especially among west coast collectors, so the dollhouse was something beyond what one would normally give a five year old who was more interested in Matchbox cars than Victorian love seats and Hoosier cabinets.  My grandmother, an ardent doll collector, gave me a couple of Barbies to go with the house (they were way taller than doorways) and was appalled to discover that I was using the livingroom as a garage for my Matchbox and had stored everything Victorian in the attic. In later years, during the “Lost in Space” phase of the dollhouse, the rest of the furniture migrated to the attic, a pink Barbie convertible took on a new life as a spaceship for Captain Action, and the rooms were filled with Lego chairs and consoles.

Over the course of its life, the house was a space port, a spy agency, a detective agency, and the Ponderosa, readapting each time my interests changed. Whatever my mother thought of the transformation, she never said a word. When I outgrew the dollhouse and my interests shifted to playing air guitar to the Monkees and Paul Revere and learning how to play softball, the house was given to a cousin’s daughter. Shag carpets made out of towels replaced the hardwood floors and the walls went from muted wallpaper to electric colors.

 The house is back on the workbench, once again being rehabbed before heading west to another member of the family in another generation. New dolls require new furniture and a whole new interior, but the house remains two rooms and a bathroom upstairs, two larger rooms downstairs.  The house reaches its 50th birthday this coming Christmas, so it seems appropriate for it to enter a third generation of use. I hope Nora and her daughter and on to the next will get as much as the two earlier generations.

mhd

There are those much more rare people who never lose their curiosity, their almost childlike wonder at the world; those people who continue to learn and to grow intellectually until the day they die. And these usually are the people who make contributions, who leave some part of the world a little better off than it was before they entered it.- William H. Sheldon

“Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton asked why.”  ~Bernard Baruch

When I was a kid, National Geographic was a big deal. Where else could you learn about mountaineering in the Alps and line dancing in sub-Saharan Africa. I especially looked forward to the issues with the maps. I used National Geographic for my reports for school and for entertainment on snow days. It could be 20 degrees outside and blowing snow, but I was exploring Tahiti and the Great Barrier Reef and dreaming of warmer climes.

Now, I’m a Google Earth Junkie. Where else can you go and find all things geographic…and historical…and wierd.  In the same way that Google’s art museum project may be the coolest thing to happen to art history, Google Earth is simply the coolest way to explore the world.  You can learn all sorts of stuff: from the design of the new base at the South Pole to the road and tunnel network in the Faroe Islands (I’m a planner by training, so road networks are one of those appealing geek things).

What does Google Earth have to do with a toy store in an old railroad depot? Everything. Great toys invoke curiosity and exploration. Whether you are trying to build the Eiffel Tower out of Kevas, writing a new play for wooden spoon puppets, mastering the art of crocheting or quilting, or learning about volcanoes in your kitchen or aerodynamics in the family room, toys and kits are a great way to learn new skill sets and explore how we see the world.

For more information on cultivating curiosity, spend a few minutes perusing the materials from the folks at Curious Mind, including their free materials for parents, and stop by the Cambria Toy Station for some excellent ideas on how to spark creativity and curiosity in both children and adults.

Other great sites for information on stimulating curiosity include:

• Creating Minds
• Curiosity (from the folks at the Discovery Channel)
• Curiosity Counts
• Curiosity in the Classroom

Play and Adults (Its just kids’ stuff…or maybe not)

One thing you discover, if you own a toy store, is that adults secretly love toys. I stopped counting the number of folks who stopped long enough to push the small wooden trains around the track, moved the peg leg pirate from the deck to the crow’s nest and back, flew the sample balsa airplane across the room, built new structures with the blocks, and attributed their behavior to “testing” the products. Their smiles indicated something else, something far more fundamental. Inevitably, they walked up to the counter and commented on “how I must enjoy my job.” The comment was often accompanied by a wistful sigh, as though they, themselves, wished they had the same excuse.

Before owning a toy store (and a publishing company specializing in scale modeling books–a different kind of play), I worked as a county planner. I kept toys on my desk, a fact that often amused the folks who came into my office. The toys were there as calming tools. They helped with writer’s block, a method of decreasing frustration when the point to the report I was writing refused to translate onto paper.

There are very few toys in the store that wouldn’t work equally well for children and adults: blocks and building sets, jacks and marbles, puzzles and magnetic mosaics, art kits and science projects. I have a weather station at the apartment end of the depot. I am endlessly fascinated by the weather, so it made sense to try one of the weather kits. I have a jigsaw puzzle on a table in the living room, a mosaic kit on the kitchen table, a Keva Planks set in my studio. All are forms of play.

Retirees and grand parents understand play. I stopped counting the number of jack sets and balsa airplanes we sold this year, not to children but to grandparents who remembered loving the game as children and who are beyond the age where appropriateness dictates behavior.

We are programmed to believe, somehow, that play is the purview of the very young and the very old, but is inappropriate for working adults, yet invention and creativity are both the bi-products of play. We forget that play, or experimentation, leads to other things, to new perspectives, to new solutions. When we don’t play, we dull.

Next time you wander through a toy store, or through the toy aisles at the local big box, stop and buy something for yourself. Buy something that looks like fun. Buy something you have always wanted to try. Here are a few suggestions to get you started:

• A science kit…you can’t tell me that you haven’t always wanted to build a volcano on your kitchen counter or wanted to try tossing an airfoil out your third or fourth floor office window just to see what it might do….
• Art supplies. Pick up a coloring book, or some Sculpey, or a blank tablet and some colored whatever. Doodle, color outside the lines, create something with clay, play with the images. If you are working on a project, try thinking about your project in color, in squiggles and splotches…..
• ABC blocks. Enjoy stories? Try creating stories using the letters or images from randomly drawn blocks (ours come with a bag to make it easier)…
• Keva Planks…go to your office or kitchen table and build something. Not sure where to start, try something in the book and then try variations on the theme.
• Pick up a puzzle…
• Or a game….
• Or a puppet…
• Or a robotic toothbrush head
• Or a yo-yo

Whatever you do, don’t wait until you are a grand parent to discover play.

If you want to know more about the benefits of play for adults, check out these resources:

• Play, Creativity, and Lifelong Learning: Why Play Matters for both Kids and Adults (HelpGuide.org)
• Institute of Play (Chicago)
• The National Institute for Play
• Play and Adults: Bye-bye to Stress, Hello to More Creativity (Lappset)
• Seriously Considering Play. Lloyd P. Riever, University of Georgia
• The Top Ten Benefits of Play (Creativity Portal)
• The Art of Play: Helping Adults Reclaim Imagination and Spontaneity. Adam Blatner, MD Brunner/Mazel, Inc. 1997.
• Stress Management:Fun and the Importance of Play: Why Adults Need to Play, Too