Tired of buying Princesses, Dolls, and Barbies for Christmas?
Toys that Promote STEM for Girls
This year my husband and I are trying to promote non-princess toys for our daughter. Our beautiful smart daughter is obsessed with princesses and Barbies. I am not happy that we got ourselves here, but the fact is we have. We are not going to ban princesses, pink, or Barbies. But we are going to try our best not to feed into it this Christmas. We are going to spend our hard earned cash on presents that will promote STEM for her instead.
Our daughter LOVES crafts and colouring. She will spend hours drawing pictures, playing with play dough, painting, doing puzzles and playing board games. With that in mind here are some of the toys we have chosen to purchase this year to get her more interested in STEM (shhh don’t spill the beans to her :-) ).
Goldieblox @goldieblox
The Motto for Goldiebox is “Building games for girls to inspire future engineers.” This game has been on my radar for awhile.
The game we choose for our daughter is “GoldieBlox and the Spinning Machine.” Goldie is a fictional character the toy company has created. In this game the backstory is that Goldie wanted to build a machine that would help her dog, Nacho, to chase his tail. A book include with the toy explains this for your child. The child builds a belt drive machine that will allow Goldie and her friends help Nacho chase his tail! There is more than one way to set it up, so it allows for creativity.
I might have as much fun as her in playing with this one! Always a sign of a good toy in my opinion.
Red toolbox @Red_Toolbox
Red Toolbox builds tools for kids. They design the tools to suit a child’s grip. The idea behind the toy is that parents can spend time with your kids building fun stuff like bird houses, toolboxes, and other small woodworking projects.
If your daughter loves crafts, then I think she will love this too. It will teach her from a young age that there is nothing wrong with women using tools to build fun things. My personal challenge is to do one of these projects with her. It won't teach her much if she only does them with her Dad!
Roominatetoy @RoominateToy
Roominatetoy is a Kickstarter start up whose goal is to create toys to make STEM fun for girls. Similar to Goldieblox they are taking ideas that are usually put into “Boys” toys and putting a female twist on them. In this case you buy a kit to put together a doll house. The twist is that after the walls go up you can install lights, elevators, and fans!
Girls and boys are not the same
Girls and boys are not the same, girls will always tend towards pink (or magenta in my daughters case), dolls, barbies, and princess. They will also in general be less inclined to play with dinosaurs, superheros, and ninja turtles. That is the world we currently live in and that is ok, but it doesn't mean they can't have access to the toys with STEM themes!
Clearly buying special STEM themed toys for girls is not the only way to get them interested in STEM fields. There are lots of other things you can do as parents as well. You can talk to your girls about STEM topics the same way you would a boy, you can bring them to the museum, you and bring books about STEM home. The ideas are endless. But changing what is in the toy aisles surely can't hurt.
Message me on Twitter @Dinah_Davis if you have more great ideas of how we can get more girls interested in STEM.
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Check out my list of 2014 toys : https://medium.com/@dinah_davis/you-re-very-welcome-8c3cea0c0f40
