Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Creative Deprivation

One of our new favorite books is Elizabeti's Doll. It tells the story of an African village girl who adopts a rock. She studies its features, bathes, feeds, and loves it as dearly as any girl loves a doll--perhaps even more so. Imagination is something that money can't buy. So why are we so intent on spending it away?

3 comments:

AnnMarie said...

Oh, why did you have to post this today and why do I have to check and see if the library upstairs has it and they do so of course I have to go read it??? The problem is that our local kids consignment shop is having a 50% off sale, including on their new Melissa and Doug wooden toys that I just adore. (There's a neat on that has items in slices with velcro holding them together. There's a wooden knife in the set that the child can use to cut them apart. It would be so cool to add to the dumpster-dived free toy kitchen I found the other week.) Anyway...I'm always fighting to reduce MJ's toys and here you had to remind me even more on a day I hoped to buy more...... What to do????

Anonymous said...

I have this HUGE struggle! I started out with one tiny toybox, but then I discovered yard sales and craigslist, and we are overflowing. I got rid of a lot of fluff (things like stuffed animals that aren't beloved) but I still need to weed out. I mean how many different styles of blocks do we really need-even though blocks are a keeper? :) Now I'm looking at what exactly gets played with and what I'd like to encourage them to play with. Everything else goes. Neat thing is when I weeded out, they started playing with the things I'd hoped they would. They just couldn't find them before. :) Annemarie the biggest tip I have learned is that anytime I get something that is playworthy (and spaceworthy!) I must get rid of something that takes up at least that much space, and hopefully something else. That way you'll always have only what gets used and more room as time goes by. :)

Meredith said...

Thanks, anonymous, that's a good tip.