Remember When: School Toys

Bear Counters: Remember hearing the noise of these bears moving around in the bin when these would be pulled out for math lessons? The noise they made by being pushed around by eager little kids trying to grab the blue ones is memorable. They were one of the toys that looked somewhat appetizing as a child. This was one of the first times in a kindergartener’s life where their best judgment was tested by being tempted to see if they taste good. 

Colorful counting blocks: Remember when you and your friends would build these blocks into swords and fight? This would continue until your build broke and all of the individual blocks would crash and spread across the whole floor. These cubes with one peg and holes on the rest of the sides were meant for lessons in counting and math operations but they always turned into an outlet for children to let their imaginations run wild with their crazy builds. 

Geoboards: Remember when you would try to stretch the rubber band as far across the board as it could, praying that it wouldn’t snap? It always eventually did and it would pinch your finger. In school, these boards were used for learning shapes. You would stretch the rubber bands onto the different pegs to create the shapes instructed by the teacher. But usually instead of following along with the teacher, students would all be racing each other to see who could fill the whole board first.

Scooters: Remember the feeling of walking into gym class and seeing the scooters laid out in lines across the floor? This sight meant that it was going to be a fun class. These scooters brought out the foul side of every student, with every one clashing into each other like they were on makeshift bumper cars. There would always be a handful of kids who lost against the scooter and left the class with battle scars from hitting the ground or getting their finger pinched.

Parachute: Remember counting in your head to see how long the parachute would stay puffed up above your head for? The parachute was an almost weekly staple in every elementary school gym class but there was no actual fitness benefit gained from it. It was a nice trick to make students feel like they were exercising.