Caroline's "Computer"

[puppetmaker]

Yesterday Caroline informed me that she created a computer for her. It consists of her Diego Colorform Box on its side so it looks like a screen and a pink metal fauchon box that she got from who knows where. The metal box is the "keyboard". She has been "typing" on the box and telling me what she is doing on her computer including who she has gotten e-mail from and what she said in reply. She has been quite content playing with it.

Yesterday she took her exercise mat and my throw blanket and put it over the coffee table and the couch creating a cave for her and her stuffed animals. It reminded me of these large "junk" games I use to play as a kid. I honestly don't remember who named them junk games but I am assuming that it would be one of my parents. But we had a whole bunch of toys and stuff that we use to turn into anything we could imagine. Nice to know that those genes passed onto the next generation.

I am grateful for junk games and the next generation of them.

Comments

[alryssa.livejournal.com]

*laughs* Oh, that's great. :)

My then best friend and I used shoeboxes to create a palace for our toy ponies since there was no possible way we could afford the Paradise Estate (which retailed back *then* for sixty pounds!).

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

I have managed to convince Caroline that she doesn't need every piece of a play set to have fun. We have so much fun making our own.

[popfiend.livejournal.com]

She is VERY VERY imaginative.

But you and Peter are both incredibly creative people. As observant as she is, that has to rub off.

Good on you.

[popfiend.livejournal.com]

BTW, some of the best fun I ever had was playing in a large empty cardboard box.

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

I know. Did you ever see a Pixar cartoon called the Tin Toy? I think they won an Oscar for it.

[popfiend.livejournal.com]

Sounds familiar.

Probably remember it somewhere in the back of my very littered brain.

[lunalovegoddess.livejournal.com]

There's nothing you can't do with a little imagination and household "props". My kids were happy as toddlers playing with empty boxes and random items. (With a few crayons and glue, a box could be transformed into a racecar, a spaceship, a restaurant table, etc.) For all the toys that Santa brings them, the majority of their time had been spent in creative play.

I remember one time walking into my then three-year-old daughter's room to find her Barbie doll hanging from between her canopy bed posts by a shoelace. She informed me that her doll was a circus performer, and that I needed to be quiet because "she cannot afford to lose her concentration". (There were "lions and tigers" on the bed beneath her...) There are many more stories like this, most of them involving girls in some sort of imminent peril. I think she's been influenced by my literary and viewing habits, because her latest obsession is writing. (Last year's NaNoWriMo was about kitsune, so lately I've been hearing about her stories of a werefox detective conveniently named Ms. Kitsune, involved in increasingly similar plotlines to Harry Potter... I told her that she is allowed to write fanfiction about my characters.)

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

That's great! I love children's imaginations.

Has she every read Fantastic Mr. Fox?

[readinggeek451]

You and I used to do the "drape a big piece of cloth over furniture as a private play-area" trick, too. I think it was sheets; I know we did it in your basement.

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

It was an old white chenille bedspread that had been on my parent's bed until we moved to Lullwater and they got new furniture so it didn't fit anymore.

I was talking to my mother this morning about the junk games and she reminded me that we were only allowed to keep them up for a week. On Saturday, we had to clean the whole place up.

I was rather lucky that I had that basement to play in when I was growing up. Most families don't have that kind of room.

[readinggeek451]

Bedspread! Now I remember. It draped very well. And the basement made a cool play area. Were we allowed to leave the horse's names on the "stalls", or did we have to clean those up, too?

I had the playroom until I was about 10 or 11, when it became J's bedroom. Before that, we shared a room.

[puppetmaker40.livejournal.com]

That was her once consession during the summer. We did get to keep the names tacked down. But we did have to pick up the horses.

Speaking of which, guess who's daughter is becoming a horse nut?

[readinggeek451]

We had to pick up the purely imaginary horses? ;)

All little girls are horse nuts. That's not so much genetic as it is sex-linked.