Last week’s Toy Tuesday entry got me to thinking about the nature of toys and what we consider to be a toy. If you look up the definition for the word “toy” you’ll find many different meanings for this one word. Rightly so! What a tech lover is going to think of as a toy might very well differ from what a seven year old would want if they were given a new toy and some seven year old boys might have very different opinions than the seven year old girls. Certain things have a wider appeal as a toy (the …read more

When I was a child, an adult gave me a toy called a “Do Nothing” The one I had was clearly hand made with lots of care, beautifully stained and polyurethaned and, on the bottom, handwritten prior to receiving it’s shiny coat of varnish, was a story about playing with the toy when you “want to relax and…do nothing.” It was useless and charming all at once. It had an allure I can’t quite explain…the sound of the wooden pieces going along their respective tracks, always approaching one another but never ever being able to touch, the squareness of the toy both in contrast and in concert with the circular movement your hand made to play with the “Do Nothing”. The more modern Ball of Whacks reminds …read more

Alright, this is a great item for both the child (appropriate for ages 3-6) on your gift list as well as their parents!

This toy got great reviews, and it is no wonder why. A toy that lets a child play on the computer that also prevents them from accessing anything that you don’t want them to (or anyone accessing them) and without being able to change any computer settings or accidentally deleting a file? Genius! Protects the child and the computer. The child can only access the websites for the “keys” (a key is the character that he inserts into a slot in order to access that character’s website) he has.

This is a toy that probably won’t collect too much dust because each site has different levels of difficulty so that as the child grows it will remain interesting. For a gift under …read more