If you join our community on Facebook or follow us on Twitter before July 6th, you’ll be eligible to win a fantastic Summer Fun package, full of toys for both sunny and rainy days! The giveaway includes:

We will have a random drawing on Monday, July 6th, and one lucky person will win this set of almost $200.00 in natural, fun toys! And stay tuned throughout the year: We’ll have regular giveaways, special sales and other surprises, available only to our Twitter and Facebook friends.

“Dear Toy Store Owner,

[We] would like to make you aware of DVDs that will compliment [sic] the toy offerings in your store. ”

This will go right next to our Nutcracker Ninjas!

You might want to turn down the volume while you watch this one!

The great Cugolino marble track from Cuboro:

and then some “pop” (but no music)

A quick trip to the Boston Museum of Science yesterday reminded me that I’d meant to post a taped lecture by Arthur Ganson, whose 23 Strips of Paper is found in the museum’s collection. Ganson is renowned for his “Twittering Machines”, kinetic sculptures that fascinate, please and inspire. It is rather touching that his urge to create has its roots in childhood, when as a shy, introverted boy, he would “make things for people as a way of showing [his] love.”

By now, you may have noticed that the site has undergone some cosmetic changes–lightening of colors, widening of borders. We hope you won’t notice the even more subtle changes to some of the functionality. We think the tweeking has made it even more enjoyable to browse at The Wooden Wagon

For those in a nostalgic mood, here is a small reminder of what the old design looked like.

Old site design

I can’t think of any song that can transport me back to my Connecticut youth like Two Buffaloes, by the Australian performer Rolf Harris. It was a staple on Bob Steele’s morning show on WTIC out of Hartford, as eagerly anticipated as the school closings he’d announce on wintry days. (And we’d all adjust our postures at the breakfast table when Steele admonished us to “Sit up straight”, as if he were in the very room).

It is not, so far as I can tell, now available commercially. But in tracing it on the web, I’ve found countless requests and queries from other nostalgic Nutmeggers, all linking this quirky counting song to the warm-voiced announcer who brought it to us children, a respite from the adult world of news, weather and the morning traffic.

Words can not describe how happy I am now that Tomi Ungerer’s The Three Robbers has been reprinted.

I’m sure I never read this as a child: it is too wonderful to have been forgotten. But I’ve looked for a copy ever since I discovered it at our library, and finally, after long delay, it is available again. In the month since we have had it on our bookshelf, not a day has gone by that our youngest has not had it down on the floor to read.

I will say no more, but buy it. You can’t go wrong with this one.

The Three Robbers

Today’s post brought the fantastic ShapeMaker Pattern Blocks from Miller Goodman. I have a thing for pattern blocks, and their ShapeMaker video would make a convert of anyone!

The bird laying an egg is a particular favorite!

A simple backstrap weaving project with materials found in any household, as demonstrated by Travis Meinolf.

“Children need to strive and struggle and stretch themselves, but that does not mean childhood should be a race. Slow parents give their children plenty of time and space to explore the world on their own terms.” Carl Honoré
From the NY Times:

What is Slow Parenting?

Carl Honore’s book Under Pressure: Rescuing Our Children from the Culture of Hyper-Parenting was resissued this week in paperback.