Frank Gehry ~ "License to Play"

"My grandparents had a wood stove, and I'd go with her to shops around the neighborhood where we'd buy burlap sacks filled with small, leftover wood pieces. When we got home, she'd open one of the sacks and . . . we'd sit on the floor together and make things out of them -- cities, bridges, buildings. . . . Years later, I realized it was a license to play. That was important to me, because when you start out in architecture, or in any of the arts, the baby steps you take are scary. By the time you get there, you've been through a school system that tries to make everything rational, mathematical, and logical and all of a sudden you're confronted with something that's emotional and intuitive. You look for anchors, and my anchor was this memory of my grandmother."
~ Frank Gehry, Pritzker Prize-winning architect

P.S. Your child deserves wooden building blocks, too.

Sir David Frost on making a difference

"My father often used to talk about that old proverb, 'Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.'  In other words, everybody you meet has something to teach you - if you take the trouble to find it.  The most unlikely person can enlighter your life.  That's tremendously important for the self-worth of the people you meet, as well as your own.

There are all sorts of ways in which we're not equal, but we are all equal in what we can strive for.  When I interviewed Senator Robert Kennedy back in 1968 - the last interview he gave before his assassination - I asked him how he would like to be remembered.  He replied, "Well, there is a line of Albert Camus that says, 'This is a world in which children suffer."  I'd like to have made a contribution to lessening that suffering.'  Kennedy spoke a lot about making a contribution.  He used to say, "For if we do not do this, then who will do this?" It's so simple: if you have a talent, you have a duty to use it to the full.

Making a contribution and making a difference - they should be linked - is not only something that famous people can do, or that dead politicians can be quoted on.  It is something that everyone can do in their own lives...."

Pearl of Wisdom #44

"I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy."

-Rabindranath Tagore, philosopher, author, songwriter, painter, educator, composer, Nobel
laureate (1861-1941)

Use sparingly!

My friends from Brazil came to visit last month. They brought me the most delicious chocolates I have ever tasted from Cacau Show. The bag announced in Portuguese: "Chocolate is magical. It opens smiles, it translates desires, it joins people, it brings the joy of energy." One could say the same things about Discovery Toys!

"Never fear...

spoiling children by making them too happy.
Happiness is the atmosphere in which all good affections grow."
~~Thomas Bray (1656-1730), English clergyman & philanthropist

"The darn trouble with cleaning the house is...

... it gets dirty the next day anyway, so skip a week if you have to. The children are the most important thing.”
~~Barbara Bush, First Lady

"True Teachers Are...

... those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their own."
--Nikos Kazantzakis, poet and novelist (1883-1957)

Dean Kamen on kids

In yesterday's blog entry, I gave a link to an amazing interview Anderson Cooper did earlier this year with Dean Kamen, an inventor and the founder of the FIRST robotics competitions. 13 minutes into the interview, he has this to say,

"There's no stimulus package that this country can possibly put together that will have a better return than stimulating the next generation of kids in this country to be for the 21st century our Thomas Edison, Orville and Wilbur Wright, the Google boys."

Can you see why Discovery Toys hold such a special place in my heart? How can a child get a better start in math and science than playing with building blocks or manipulatives like Giant Pegboard, Marbleworks, Measure Up Cups or math games like Think it Through tiles?

We've come a long way, baby

It's astonishing to discover what women used to think about and reflect on. One need look no further than F. Scott Fitzgerald's jazz age tale of Bernice Bobs her Hair in which someone says, "If she looks like a million dollars she can talk about Russia, ping-pong, or the League of Nations and get away with it."

"Women as the guardians of children...

possess great power. They are the molders of their children's personalities and the arbiters of their development."
-- Ann Oakley, born 1944, English sociologist

Moms everywhere know that we are our children's first and most important teachers, even while in utero, according to an article about fetal memory,

"A team of medical researchers in the Netherlands combined sonogram technology with sound and vibration stimulation to discover that 30-week-old fetuses demonstrate short-term memory. By 34 weeks, these babies in utero are able to store and retrieve that information up to four weeks later, according to the study published in the medical journal Child Development."

So, moms, be selective with the music you listen to, the words you speak, the foods you eat, the examples you set. Your baby is absorbing it all.

"I was not a classic mother....

...but my kids were never palmed off to boarding school. So, I didn't bake cookies. You can buy cookies but you can't buy love."
-- Raquel Welch, born 1940, American actress

Mark Twain on parents

"We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve. We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift, our personal association, which means so much to them, we give grudgingly."

Do you agree with this? I'd love to know my readers' comments.

"To talk to a child....

to fascinate him, is much more difficult than to win an electoral victory. But it is more rewarding."
--Colette (1873-1954) French writer

In our fast-paced world, we often neglect to take time to "smell the roses." We're so occupied with our careers and our computers, that we sometimes overlook the all important face-to-face communication with our kids. Did you know that the children whose families have dinner together (and talk over dinner), have higher SAT scores? Playing word games like ABSeas, Pick Up Words, Zingo, or Brain Game, or reading books like Puzzle Island, gives you an opportunity to communicate with your child and engage her. Playing with construction toys, like Marbleworks, gives you an opportunity to converse, too. Try it and experience the results!

"Loving a child....

doesn't mean giving in to all his whims; to love him is to bring out the best in him, to teach him to love what is difficult."
--Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) French musician and teacher

Rose Kennedy:

"I looked on child rearing not only as a work of love and duty but as a profession that was fully as interesting and challenging as any honorable profession in the world and one that demanded the best that I could bring to it.
--Rose Kennedy, born 1890, mother of a U.S. President, an Attorney General, a U.S. Senator, a Navy aviator, a marchioness, an ambassador and 3 other children

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood

"Play is an expression of our creativity, and creativity is at the very root of our ability to learn, to cope, and to become whatever we may be."
--Fred Rogers, pbs.org/rogers

Maria Montessori:

"Adults admire their environment; they can remember it and think about it -- but a child absorbs it. The things he sees are not just remembered; they form part of his soul. He incarnates in himself all in the world about him that his eyes see and his ears hear."
--Maria Montessori, educator, physician, philosopher

The importance of your child's environment

"Absorbing a host of impressions through his senses is almost the exclusive task of the infant...Often the whole life of a person is not sufficient to efface the impressions absorbed in childhood, because his whole being, like a large eye, was open and wholly given to them. For this reason the care of an infant is so important."
-- Friedrich Froebel, educator, founder of the Kindergarten

Brain Development in Babies

"Babies are busy 'wiring' their brains. They are born with all the brain cells (neurons) they need, but they are not 'intelligent' as we understand that term...they perceive but don't think the way we so because they can't retain images or symbols in their minds. Babies construct intelligence through experience, welding sparsely connected neurons into densely interconnected pathways."
-- Jim Greenman, educator

Rachel Carson (1907-1964) American biologist:

"If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in."