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Okay, so who had Cusinaire rods?--educational toys remembered.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

13:27 / 09.12.04

The Big Trak thread made me think of this. Toys that I actually had, educational ones.

I had a (shared) set of Cusinaire rods which I still recall fondly. I also had a wonderful cut-out kit book called Mathematical Curiosities, which started with Moebus strips and worked up. Also cool was Kubic Bubbles, plastic framey things to be dipped in soapy water for shiny wet rainbow physics. Not strictly a toy but worthy of an honorable mention are my Dad's old slide rule and reverse Polish calculator, which I was given to play with. There were others but these stand out in my mind.

Did you have educational toys? Did you have a screamingly middle-class playmate who you beat up for hir Capsela? Did the toys rock? Did they suck in that very special "But I Wanted Skull Mountaaaaain!" way? Tell all.

13:42 / 09.12.04

The Visible Man. It was actually my dad's, but I so loved playing with that thing. Pulling out all the little organs and putting them back in, like a physiological jigsaw puzzle.

I also had a folder full of transparency sheets with patterns printed on them, and when you layered two of them and moved them against each other it made cool optical illusions. I wish I still had those.

And pressure rockets. Do those count as educational? The ones where you put in a little water, and then pump air in and lock onto the little base, and when you release it the rocket goes FSHSHSHSHSHSHSHST straight up about fifty feet, and then falls on top of your head? Good times. Taught me a lot about not looking directly into the sun searching for a hard plastic object that's plummeting in your general direction.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

14:12 / 09.12.04

Ooooh, I had some of those op-art sheets! They were wicked.

14:24 / 09.12.04

I had a Spirograph, and geometric paper to colour in which was hugely inspiring at the time but seems a bit pathetic in retrospect.

My son's got Geomag.

This beats all other educational toys and is wildy addictive. The beautiful man thinks it should be free in all schools.

17:36 / 09.12.04

I LOVEd spirograph!! And Mordant, I'd just like to tell you that cuisenaire rods are "all the rage" in English language teaching. I use them all the time with my students, and they always get very excited when I "pass out the toys"

19:27 / 09.12.04

cuisinaire rods! wow, memories of a happy kindergarten in sydney, with a large lawn/dirt area under a couple of huge eucalypts (though if i went back now i'm all tall it'd be a small sqaure of dirt under a couple saplings!)... and spirograph on summer holidays, yeah!

but i distinctly recall counting from age 4 on, for a couple years at least, by visualising the colour and length of the number.

it didn't quite stick though, i don't do it anymore [i use the times tables] but this was a way of trying to induce synesthesia in kids: with a short term result in me; but i wonder if the other thread - in headshop? - has discussed this...

good toys are great! i also remember some pretty funky science kits that had chemicals and you could do experiments and stuff. that was great - don't recall the brand, but there were microscope kits and mecano-kinda kits and chemical kits and rocks and minerals kits and probably three or four more lines of science i'm forgetting about. great stuff!

19:57 / 09.12.04

I had a Spirograph- and still do, sort of. Any Mac user is encouraged to relive their childhood with MacSpirographic. I had Capsella, too. Good Christ, I just recently realized how spoiled I was!

There was another toy, made in the late 70's, early 80's, whose name escapes me. There were two components: plastic rods of varying lengths that snapped into holes in plastic spheres, sort of like the steel-ball-and-magnet toys you find these days, but infused with the late-70's sci-fi esthetic. You could make these great geometric shapes. Does this sound familiar to anybody?

20:41 / 09.12.04

Oh yeah, and did anybody else get the Human Anatomy coloring book when they were a kid?

21:55 / 09.12.04

Do they still make Spirographs? The pen-and paper ones, that is, because I don't have a Mac

My grandma had one at her house and whenever I would go over there I would draw pictures of landscapes with my spiros in the sky like fireworks. Little characters on the ground would point up and say,"Oooh" and "Aahh" in little word bubbles.

The Human Anatomy Coloring Book makes a great (and inexpensive) holiday gift. I give copies to friends and they are suitably impressed.

When I was a kid, my Dad gave me a real professional microscope. I so loved that thing. It was later stolen and hocked by some drug-addict relatives. Good-for nothing junkie bastards.