therinrins's Profile

I guess I want my home to look as though children actually live in it. I don't like garish primary colored plastic toys, either, but I like turquoises, greens, yellows, oranges, wood tones...there are options. All kinds of studies have been done to show how color affects mood. Children love bright colors; it is a fact. Why deprive them of the joy of living among a colorful world that obviously makes them happy? If the main objective of these toys is to avoid sullying up the adult living space, then they certainly do succeed. But then, that shouldn't be the main objective of any toy.

I really love the idea of staining the yardsticks.

I want that house! Any source for that style here in the US?

My little girl would never go to sleep again.

I totally want to paint our backyard picnic table with chalkboard paint now! How fun would that be for the kids all summer?

I had something just like this in the 70's, painted in a rainbow. It was made on site at a craft fair.

I can appreciate the sanding and staining work that would go into each letter, making it much higher quality than the spray painted one I had, but why the minimum order? For a 3-letter-named child, should the parent just order a big exclamation point to go at the end to meet the ridiculous requirement? MAX! AVA! Because $87 is paltry and not worth your time?

I love this idea! How funny would it be to make a little book of these for our mothers?

artsybetsy, thank you for chiming in from your perspective. Our history lessons DO suck, not just concerning the colonization of this country, but our involvement in terror the world over, for centuries, on every inhabited continent. There is a shield that hangs over some people's eyes, thinking that if life is good now, then what has happened to get here must have been, in some way, inherently good as well. It should all be examined, and at least acknowledged. We don't have to bring our little 4 year olds down with atrocities against native peoples, but we shouldn't continue the fairy tale, either.

Well, if the party had any games like "String the cowboy up by giant hooks in his pectorals" I might have a big problem with it.

I think some of the sensitivity is coming from the stereotyping, not the tipi. Many people in this country never learned that most "Indians" did not live in "Teepees". Tipi use was common only in some (but not all!--http://www.historyonthenet.com/Native_Americans/tribes.htm) tribes in the Great Plains which, before Europeans arrived, was the least populated of the entire area to become the US. The myth of the cowboy and the pioneer, a fantastical myth that caused thousands of men to quit their factory jobs in the East and go West to run cattle, perpetuated the Wild Indian myth. It's a coincidence that this all happened around the time that magazine and newspaper publications also became readily available.

People in the West told stories to people in the East. And when Manifest Destiny came around, the Eastern tribes and the Western coastal tribes were already wiped out by disease or relocation, so there was not much left to do but to continue wiping out the Great Plains peoples. That's what made the newspapers.

So. If my four year old wanted to have a Tipi birthday party, I think I might have specified it as a Sioux party, and taught the guests and my children that we were learning about one particular tribe, where they lived, how they hunted buffalo, what they did for fun. I might have included a traditional Sioux children's game. I would have definitely added that so many other tribes were as different as anyone could imagine, such as the Pacific Northwest tribes who carved totems out of trees, used boats instead of horses, and ate smoked salmon.

I don't need a crib anymore, but I am loving that little toy tray. I could see one of those in the living room.