Fisher Price and Lego
When I was a child, one of my favorite things to do was set up an entire city in the basement of Fisher Price buildings and then make up things that happen in my town. I was usually able to recruit my sister into playing with me and the cities stayed intact for weeks on end - much to the chagrin of our mother.
Fisher Price has evolved into Little Me a lot more plastic - and somehow my boys never really got into it. We'll see about my daughter. But the opportunity to create a story and play it out lives on - just in my case, it's Lego Bionicles. Interestingly, the boys aren't using the comic book that Lego puts out about Bionicles. They're just building the creators and staging battles. They come up with rules for how a creature can be recuscitated or destroyed. They have rules for how creatures collaborate.
And, just like me, my eldest loves lego and recruits his brother to join in the game. It's certainly a different toy in use, but it's still the same game - let's create a make believe situation and play it out - together. And then, let's do it again.
What do your kids play that's different from what you did and yet the same?