I have the makedo and the screws are legit amazing. I never imagined that they could possibly work so well. It's one of those things I always recommend to other parents.

The very real downside is that your kids become attached to their creations. So you end up with a house perpetually full of cardboard and fighting a constant battle to part with some of it.

In one of my art history classes we learned of a Bauhaus (or Dada?) artist that would stack their old belongings into the corners of their apartment and then plaster over it in order to reduce the clutter in their home. Might be worth trying out.

FWIW, my kids never took to the screws, but are still ridiculously attached to their creations.

I strive to be open and honest in my parenting, but these battles just don’t seem worth everyone’s investment. A box spaceship that hasn’t been touched in a week is quietly “disappeared” to the basement, and if it’s not inquired after by the end of a month it goes to recycling.

This just creates trauma that leads to more hoarding behavior as they try to keep things from disappearing in the future.

Instead, you need to complete the lifecycle of a creation. They should know things they make won’t last forever, and you need to encourage the destruction when the time comes, and after that, they can create a new thing to fill the void, and the cycle continues.

Agreed. I know a hoarder (self-described, accurately) who traces it all back to her mom secretly throwing away her toys. She became highly defensive of her "things", to a ridiculous (three houses filled) extent.

My mother, OTOH, while not the greatest in the world, would ask me to choose which toys were being donated to "other children who don't have any" (Goodwill, probably). I keep things longer than I should, but can throw away the unused from time to time, keeping my house sort of tidy-esque, kinda.

If you're going to do it, you really have to pay attention to your kid(s).

When I was in my early teens, I walked in on my mom going through my brother's toys with a bag in hand to get rid of them. Once I figured out what she was doing, I asked the obvious question, if she'd ever done it to me, and she just nonchalantly asked me if I had ever missed any toys.

I never had. She actually knew which ones mattered and which ones didn't. These days I miss the magic fairy that comes in and gets rid of the things I don't use anymore when I'm not looking!

Yup, too many parents just buy mindlessly for their kids without thinking of the exit plan for all this stuff, preferring to just throw it away when their kid doesn’t notice. This gets rid of the garbage but then your kid is left with the impression they can just consume endlessly and there’s always room for something else, they never go through the process of getting rid of things.

As a parent, I try to be very judicious about what I buy them for their entertainment. But we have a large family and everyone wants to bring a little something. When the kids were younger I get away with asking family and friends to just gift clothes if they must gift something or just bring a card or better yet a book they loved and signed instead of a card. But as kids got bigger they started expressing desires themselves so family and friends now buy toys along with more practical stuff. They try to be educational but the number of unopened rock painting kits you can fit into your storage is only so many.

I like the little tools, and actually the price for them isn't so bad (8 pounds, but if on a budget, that kind of saw is on AliExpress for 1 euro).

The price for the little plastic screws seems a bit nuts though (40p/unit), but I understand it's a razors-and-blades sales model. When I was in primary school, we used those brass split pin fasteners (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brass_fastener) for the same thing. You can even buy metal two-piece "mother and child" rivets 1/4 that price: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/316963279193, but they need a punch and driving it with a nice safe plectrum-style tool is maybe a little fiddlier. Blunt-ended plastic drywall screw-in fittings are also very similar and run about 5-10p each in boxes of 100.

There seems like a limited age range where a "Scru" is OK but a split pin is not (I know I used them at school almost immediately, and I started at the age of 4). The scrus get tighter, I suppose.

>it's a razors-and-blades sales model

Nah bro, its a rich people with too much money to notice cash grab all the way down. Those plastic screws are pennies per hundred to make. The tools themselves. Well you can get a 35 piece pumpkin carving set on amazon for what appears to be similar or better quality at <$15USD if you go adjacent to the source on Aliexpress the same toolset is <$3 USD or even <$1

In fact I'm pretty sure you could just use the most of the pumpkin tools on cardboard, the blunted kid safe ones. They are also meant to be not cut skin.

Thanks for introducing me to this. I hadn't previously considered there was a range of tools for kids to work with cardboard. It makes perfect sense.

I'm excited to try some of these with my kid. Paired with the Microbit and bag of various motors, LEDs and sensors, she can really start expanding her projects and imagination. I love it.

I really wish that Nintendo had teamed w/ these folks for Nintendo Labo.

that looks awesome. thanks for the link