The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that the best toys are not toys at all. Fuzzy blankets and empty boxes rule when you are inside; wild flowers, sticks and rocks for when you are outside. A blanket becomes a cape or a tent and a box becomes just [...]
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This week the New York Times ran an article about Admongo.gov, a media literacy campaign aimed at 4th through 6th graders (In a World of Ads, Teaching the Young How to Read Them, April 27th). After reading the article, and checking out the website, I was moved to write the following letter to the editor [...] This weekend I spent time thinking about Milk Media and the Milk Rocks! campaign in schools. (See previous posts “The Brawl Begins” when Milk Media meets my son and Troublemakers and Peacemakers for background information.) According to the representative I talked with, the video games and movie previews available on the Milk Rocks! website are [...] Today I am thinking about ways to make a little trouble. I am talking about speaking up when you see something that concerns you and making noise to effect small changes. Yesterday I had a conversation with an executive at MilkMedia, the folks who brought us the Bakugan/Nintendo milk carton for schools. It was an [...] Check out this picture above and guess what it is. Any ideas? Try “Exclusive LEGO Style Mega Weapons Pack (49 pieces),” sold by Toy Wiz through Amazon for $23.99 (plus shipping and handling). This weapons pack popped up yesterday – as my husband browsed Lego kits – as one of those “Customers Who Bought [...] Yesterday I wrote about the new Moxie Girlz…today it is yet another way-too-cool doll line, Liv Girls. Liv Girls includes an online world that you can enter for only $19.99 (plus $9.99 for shipping and handling). These “four fun-loving teens who love to hang out together” (but, alas, are sold separately) come with a “secret [...] I just received a request to spread the word from CCFC (Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood). Here is what is going on… “In response to a complaint filed by CCFC in 2007, the Federal Trade Commission urged the Motion Picture Association of America—the self-regulating body of Hollywood movie studios that administers film ratings in the United [...] Earlier this week on American Public Media’s Marketplace, I heard an excellent interview with James Gustave Speth, Dean of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University. The ideas presented in the interview, Taking Stock: Rethinking Consumerism, support many of the concepts I have been writing about in Empowered by Play. Speth talks about over-consumption and [...] Nostalgia is a funny thing…a wistful longing for innocent days gone by. In 2009, though, there is a new breed of nostalgia. The youngest generation of parents were raised in a world with hundreds of channels on cable TV, remote controls galore and the explosion of media-linked toys that came with the deregulation of children’s [...] About a year ago, when we moved from Boston to New York, we decided not to hook up the cable television. Before we moved, with babies in the house, we’d already cut back on TV watching. We always tried to mute all the commercials, but even with that my 3 year old sons could tell [...] |
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