There are gender wars, and then there are casualties. It wasn’t until 2011 that the behemoth toymaker LEGO acknowledged girls’ desire to build with bricks, even though the company had long before made a seemingly effortless pivot to co-branding, video games, and major motion pictures. So it’s little wonder that girls face all-too-real obstacles when […]
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“Uh-oh,” Refe Tuma heard his girls whisper. “Mom and Dad are not going to like this.”
It’s Dinovember, and his family’s plastic dinosaurs have been getting into mischief all month. Every year, Tuma and his wife devote the month of November to “convincing our children that, while they sleep, their plastic dinosaur figures come to life.
“Why do we do this?,” says Tuma, “Because in the age of iPads and Netflix, we don’t want our kids to lose their sense of wonder and imagination. In a time when the answers to all the world’s questions are a web-search away, we want our kids to experience a little mystery.”
They had managed to breach the refrigerator and help themselves to a carton of eggs:
We live in a society where too much “creative expression” is varnished consumption. Express yourself wearing brand name clothes, and personalizing your hamburger. Real creativity is a whole different animal, or dinosaur. As educational organizations, we need to help inspire parents to dig into creativity while kids are young. From historical dress-up to science experiments to pure fantasy. Tuma’s project is a great example, and I hope it takes off.
The previous morning, the dinos had climbed onto the kitchen counter to raid the fruit bowl.
Even the dinosaurs are creative. Here they made him look like Barney:
“All it takes is some time and energy, creativity, and a few plastic dinosaurs,” says Tuma.
Check out his full article with lots more dino shenanigans.