Friday, September 17, 2004

The Best Toys

Kids, using little more than their imagination, can transform the most ordinary items into fun-filled toys that provide hours (ok... sometimes just minutes) of entertainment.

There's the classic paper towel tube telescope and the closely related toilet paper roll megaphone. And of course nothing beats a big cardboard box! It could be a house, a cave, a castle, a rocket ship or any number of other structures. We make occasional trips to a nearby store that sells appliances, just so we can pick up the Cadillac of cartons, the empty refrigerator box! The store is happy to give them away, and these huge boxes provide endless fun, and are sturdy enough to survive a couple weeks of play with a 2 and 4 year old (and their friends)!

Our son's latest? Junk mail as toy! A clever piece of advertising from Independence Air caught his eye a week or two ago. It's a heavy duty self-mailer that's folded in half. When it's opened it reveals a picture of a sleek, flying jet. And, here's the kicker, it has an embedded sound chip that's activated when the mailer is opened so you can hear that plane soaring through the sky! Kind of cool.

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