Keeping it Fresh

We received our new Schleich display today and it is BEAUTIFUL!!Craig is our Schleich rep and he came out to help me put it together. One of my favorite low tech toys has always been a little plastic animal, and Schleich makes them the best. When I was a girl the only ones that were available to me were dinosaurs that had belonged to my dad. I wasn't into dinosaurs, but I spent hours with them forming family groups and enacting drama's large and small. Whether drought, starvation, or predators of unknown origins, survival was top on my list of things to play out. This kind of role playing is important to children learning how to relate to others, and how to interact with others. I can still conjure up the nurturing feelings I felt for my little dino family. One of the best things about these animals as opposed to dolls for this kind of modeling is that they are non-gender specific. Boys and girls alike enjoy playing with them. This makes them an ideal item for a family of mixed genders to collect. And, barring fire or a labrador retriever encounter, they will last for generations.

Community...and parks....

It's no secret. I love this community. As a mother, one of the things that I appreciate most is the park system. We spend a good portion of the year at various games and practices in Joe Dancer park. My dog and I are down there running the trails nearly every morning. The picture I posted was taken at the City Park, or the dragon park as all of the kids in my family call it. My dad was part of a community crew that built that play structure for the children of this community nearly twenty years ago. There were literally hundreds of people that donated money, time and tools to build it. I love that their grandchildren are playing on it now. With it's water feature, rock wall, skate park, etc. Discovery Meadows is the shiny new playground on the McMinnville park scene, but the city park is by far my favorite. It embodies so much of what makes McMinnville a great community to raise children in. First of all because it has been a gathering place for as long as McMinnville has been here. Secondly because it has that wonderful low tech wooden play structure that was built through community contributions and our volunteer spirit (not every community has that, it's special). Thirdly because it is at the center of our downtown and part of a walkable community with the library and pool right there. For my next blog I'll go on and on about some wonderful toy we have here at hopscotch (there are so many! we are receiving our Christmas inventory and every year I get so excited by it!) For today however, with summer drawn to a close and each sunny day feeling like a theft from the looming rainy season, I wanted to wax poetic one last time about summer days in the park.