The Simplest Toys are the Best

Children's Imaginations Don't Require Expensive Toys.

by Vickie Oddino

A large cupboard in my kids' playroom overflows with a lifetime of activities that have been touched once, maybe twice, and some that have never seen the light of day. One shelf alone contains armloads of coloring books, a plastic flower maker, precut foam shapes, Rainbow Art, a weave, Amazing Elastic Plastic, chalkboards, modeling clay, and Colorforms. Yet, the table in the playroom is a piece of art itself, covered with years of paint drippings, lines from markers slipping off the page, glue blobs, and glitter clumps. How's that possible?

Rather than play with the prefabricated crafts, my kids have worked their way through reams of scrap paper. It has been used for homework assignments when they play school, for wrapping paper at pretend birthday parties, for signs indicating prices at the makeup store, and for stories to be told. Apparently, a blank piece of paper holds much more intrigue and room for pure imagination than a prescribed picture in an Easter coloring book.

The desire for self-creation goes beyond art. It's an old cliche: spend hundreds of dollars on toys and the kids will spend the day playing with the boxes. Often, the box allows more room for imagination than the toy. People no longer buy, for example, a simple doll, leaving a little girl to make and remake that doll into whomever she wants. Instead, dolls come complete with a profession (soccer player, veterinarian, teacher) and the appropriate accouterments (ball, stethoscope, chalkboard).

My children play the same games night after night, few of which involve any toys whatsoever. Their current game is Lava. After dinner, they retreat to the living room and line up pillows across the floor. They then jump around the living room in what I thought was an attempt to avoid falling off the pillows into the hot lava. However, when I asked about it, I was amazed at the complexity of the game.

They each have a boat equipped with one window so they can talk to each other. Periodically, they search for berries and fish, but they put on special shoes (usually my old slippers) to protect their feet from the lava. Sometimes they fall into the lava, and when they do, it gets in their brain and they have to drink lots of water to get the lava out. If too much lava gets in their brains, they will go unconscious. Luckily, this has not happened to either of them. They even have snorkels made of carrots allowing them to swim through the lava. They end up consuming lots of carrots during this game.

Another phase was Spy Kids. After watching the movie a few times, they found acting it out to be immensely more entertaining than watching it again. Not being international spies, we have no spy paraphernalia around our house, but that did not stop my kids from using bits of masking tape to mount the world's smallest cameras throughout the house. Every now and then, I still find a little camera peeking at me from a doorframe.

Who needs Rapunzel Barbie? The true joy in playing comes when a game can be invented from scratch, from the minds of two children who have each other and all the time in the world. As loving parents, we must nurture this.