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Nov. 23, 2009
JWisdom.com: Actually, it really is all about you with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff
Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Dec 6, 2004 / 23 Kislev, 5765

Can we put some fun into the toys?

By Lenore Skenazy


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Here's a thought: Why not let kids be kids?


http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | I'm all for education. I'm all for toys. But educational toys? It's just hard to imagine a moppet jumping for joy when he tears the wrapping off and finds —


Measuring Monkeys.


Yes, that's a real board game. And in it, monkeys creep their way up a palm-tree-shaped ruler. Whooee! Quarter-inch by quarter-inch they go, the better to learn one's fractions.


But at least it's interactive.


Also crowding the toy shelves this year are such mind-boosting must-haves as a motorized solar system, a Fun With Your Cat science kit ("Give your cat a personality interview!"), alphabet beanbags for all those preschoolers who refuse to play with nonliteracy-enhancing soft toys and — for $40.99 — a talking telescope.


How did Galileo discover that whole Jupiter's moons thing with a telescope that refused even to peep, "Yo, Gali — nice work!"?


But perhaps the epitome of these games is the GeoSafari World Challenge, a battery-operated game complete with "high quality digital voice" that asks "over 7,500 fascinating questions about world countries, rivers, landmarks and more," according to the Web site.

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Forget why a game has to have a digital voice (chess seems to have enjoyed a rather long run without one) — what's with the 7,500 questions? How fascinating is that 6,784th query about the Pulap Atoll? And won't the kid be about 63 by the time the game is over?


All of which leads me to the biggest question: why? Why do so many parents think that normal toys and games aren't educational enough? Believe me, my sister learned plenty playing plain old Monopoly: adding, strategizing, bamboozling siblings five years younger than she. She played hard, paid attention — and now she owns a vast villa while I rent a modest apartment. Coincidence? I think not.


Similarly, any girl who ever played with Barbie learned an extremely crucial physics lesson: Wear heels all your life, and eventually your foot will freeze into the shape of an ice cream cone. That lesson alone is worth a year at Yale.


Boys who played with Mr. Potato Head learned lifelong grooming skills. (Need proof? Just look at the middle-aged men in your office.) Model planes taught them to think they could fix anything. MatchBox toys taught them to judge a man by the quantity of his cars. And anyone with Silly Putty learned how to read the comics backward.


Those are all important lessons, yet they did not come from educational toys. They came from what we used to call "fun." And it is precisely that silly, old-fashioned commodity I wish for all children this holiday season.

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JWR contributor Lenore Skenazy is a columnist for The New York Daily News. Comment by clicking here.

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