Conference moira::parenting_v3

    The playschool Steven went to for a while before he started
    regular preschool had one of these -- the kids loved it but it was
    kind of messy.  We got notes to dress them in "grubbies" for the
    days when the sand table was on the agenda.
    
    It's sort of like having a beach in your kitchen.  
    
    I'd say if you don't have a fairly large place that you don't mind
    getting wet, or a place for it outside in a warm climate, it
    probably isn't a good idea. 
    
    --bonnie

    Yeh, my son's school has a big one. The kids just put big bibs on when
    they're playing. They also have one at Little Tyke Town in Hudson, NH.
    But, you can't buy it there, just play with it.
    
    G

    My son's previous daycare had them as 2 seperate tables. The water one
    was only for outside so it could be drained after each use. The sand on
    was inside and they always had to sweep around it. My son loved the
    water one!!
    
    Having one of these seems like a good warm weather idea. I personally
    would not want one inside my house.
    
    The only thing I would question is whether you think your kids would
    mix the sand and water together. That's yet another "mess". 
    
    Andrea            

    
    Funny you should mention it... but I just bought one of these for my guys 
    for the holidays.  I set it up in our back hall which is tiled and
    which is considered the "mud room" anyway.  However, for the wintertime
    I am curtailing the playing to involve only water, no sand.  They can
    have sand when they move it outside next spring.  It's quite sturdy,
    doubles as a picnic table (they ate their dinner on it the first night
    out of sheer excitement).
    
    I bought it at Toys R Us in Framingham.  Child World has it too, all
    year round - I asked.
    
    So, for a 3 day update, it seems to be working GREAT!
    
    -dorothy

    My kids haven't used the Playskool table (though I've seen it and it 
    looks great to me), but they do both _love_ the "industrial-strength"
    water tables used at daycare/preschool.  For indoor play, you can also 
    substitute rice or anything else that "feels neat" and sweeps up more
    easily.
    
    In the Boston Globe Sunday, one store had a flier that advertised 20
    percent off all Playskool toys this week.  Did anyone else notice what
    store that was?  I think it even pictured the S&W table.  (It wasn't 
    Caldor, but they have the same deal on Fisher-Price infant and preschool 
    toys and on Barbie toys this week.) 
    
    
    -Tracy
    
    
    
    

    Story about those tables:
    
    At Bright Horizons (local day care near the Spit Brook Road plant
    to which my son goes),  they have such a table in the young toddler
    room (12..18 months). One day the teacher filled it with cold cooked
    pasta.  She expected them to "experience the texture" as they do 
    with water and so on, but instead the kids started eating it.
    
    		-John Bishop

    This teacher obviously doesn't have a young toddler of her own or
    she'd realize most young toddlers play with cold cooked pasta
    intended as food at least three or four times a week when they're
    supposed to be eating their dinner.  Why wouldn't they eat it when
    they're supposed to be playing with it?  Sounds like perfectly
    predictable toddler behavior to me!
    
    --bonnie

re: .7

And in the same vein, she may have found out that if she had used UNcooked 
pasta, that they would have eaten it.  When we cook pasta, my kids will 
invariably get a small bowlful of the uncooked stuff and eat it.

Clay

    As you may confirm in any child development book, extensive play with
    sand and water tables is an absolute requirement for satisfactory
    mental and physical development.  That is why civilization was so
    backward before Thomas Edison came along and invented these devices,
    along with Seseme Street and some other useful things I can't remember.
    
    Unfortunately, it is also a well established fact that no parents will
    retain their sanity if forced to deal with the complete havoc that
    reigns around a sand or water table maintained in the home.  It used be
    be thought that having a very large house and an extensive set of servents
    and nannies cleverly avoided this problem.  But this idea is false,
    which has led to much heartbreak as well as the decline of the British
    Empire, as documented on Upstairs Downstairs (which is named after the
    general direction of flow of water spilled from a water table).
    
    Americans have fared much better (to the discomforture of certain
    ruffians in distant parts of the world), having addressed this dilemma
    through the invention of daycare centers and pre-schools, which exist
    to maintain stimulating environments, and contain their otherwise
    dangerous and pernicious side effects.  Some parents, in our sadly too
    competitive world, entertain the harebrained idea that they ought to
    have sand and water tables at home, too!  To spare them the tragic
    consequences of acting on this dillusion, pre-schools have been made
    sufficiently expensive so that almost no family can afford such
    extravegant home equipment after paying their tuition.  So, all is for
    the best in this best of all possible worlds!  And there is too a free
    lunch!  Note also that, although not realized yet by the mass media, the
    sand and water table dilemma is thus also responsible for the two
    career family pattern required to maintain the daycare industry, and
    thus also for women's liberation.  
    
    So, if there be listening any parents so innocent as to be tempted down
    this slippery path (both ethically and physically), I say: Resist!  Do
    not put in peril, on this eve of the third millenium, the very
    foundations of our national economy and of the American Way of Life!
    
    		- Bruce

    RE: .9
    
    Bruce, thanks for the humor, or should I say truth of the day! Thanks
    to the notes here, I was able to locate it. The table costs $69.00 in
    Toys R Us! Ouch!
    
    Now I need to decide if I really want to subject myself to the mess i
    in addition to the cost. My
    son is contantly pulling kitchen chairs over to the sink to play there.
    It is dangerous and messy. I've even resorted to tying the chairs to
    the kitchen table so he couldn't do it. What a temper tantrum he threw!
    
    And for the sand, it it just getting too cold to do that outside. Maybe
    I could use rice, or birdseed or something else that might vacuum up a
    little easier than sand. Any ideas here?
    
    Gale

    Gale,
    
    As others have noted, be careful what you put into the table, as you
    may see it later coming out of your child!! At my son's daycare, they
    put kidney beans in the table once, do you know what a fistful of
    undigested raw kidney beans look like in a messy diaper?!?!?
    
    Maybe this is the cure for all of us frustrated parents of toddlers who
    won't eat their meals (sound familiar, Kate Nelson?!) - put their food
    in a sand and water table and tell them they can only play with it!!!
    
    Happy Holidays whatever you decide!!!
    
    Meg

    As an alternative to sand, the cooked pasta suggested earlier might be
    good if you have a large enough dog, though I wouldn't particularly
    trust it to the vacuum cleaner (or vice versa).
    
    Respecting water, don't suppose that a water table is going to
    eliminate interest in dishwashing.  Eric's 3s class at pre-school was
    equiped with a fine water/sand/substance-of-the-day table, that got
    lots of use.  But he (and a couple of other kids) still insisted on
    spending another hour each morning and again in the afternoon "washing
    dishes" at the classroom sink.  It was a medium-low sink, which he
    could access from a small step-stool.  I thought it would be great
    training for KP duty at home when he got a bit bigger.  But I should
    have known better.  Like all other fascinations of early youth (middle
    youth, too???), this talent was guarenteed to fade away before it became
    possible to channel it in actually useful directions!
    
    		- Bruce