Kids Toys

It's pretty easy to see why American children are having so much trouble in the global marketplace of science and technology....the toys. Jake got a bunch of stuff at his 6th birthday yesterday (Marisa will write about the party later), but one of the gifts was a marble rollercoaster contraption that he really wanted us to build today. 

The box said for kids six and up, but it's also an Italian toy, so that must mean six year olds who understand the metric system and plan to grow up and design new Ferarri engines. It's an AWESOME toy (says the 40 year old)! The instructions were 12 pages or so, it's got these amazing cable systems with clamps and pulleys, and you need to make all sorts of minute adjustments to get the thing to work with the different wieghts of marbles that it comes with. It teaches design and engineering concepts, encourages fine motor skills, direction following, cause and effect, and to a certain extent, the beginning principles of physics.

The kids (Jake, his friend Sean who slept over, and Tanner) spent about 5 minutes total "helping" me try to build it, before they lost interest. Then they played slam dunk, four square and football while I finished it up. Once you make all of the adjustments, even then, they have to be careful rolling the marble, because if they don't stay at the precise speed the thing is tuned for they go flying off the track. It really is a pity they don't make these things for adults, because a lot of the grown-up guys who read this blog (you know who you are) would have wanted them after putting it together (I know I have already hit the website). Plus, the damn thing glows in the dark!