In our endeavor the morals will be taught in objects, instructions on how to use objects and various editorial notes.
Grampa's Wood Toys And Objects
Many of you are devotees of our artistic engraving work, we do sell many products all around the country and I appreciate your patronage very much. In all our product areas I have only lightly pressed my philosophy of life or my religion on you (which, I believe is the same thing) because I believed the products that we were creating were essentially commercial, not philosophical. This section is somewhat different because here I am trying to positively influence younger generations with toys, various objects and points of view that stimulate the imagination and raise the moral reach of people younger than myself; my children, my grandchildren and more broadly children and grandchildren everywhere and in all different circumstances. Because children and youth are the focus of Grampa's Toys it is essential that parents and grandparents also are important points of focus.
Religiously some of you are Jews, some Christians, some many other religions and some people that are just plain non-religious. Personally, I believe in God and I am a Christian. This means that I treat the Bible as God's word, both the old and the new testament. From the Scriptures I have concluded that creativity in man is the direct imprint of the creativity of God. Some people, myself included, believe that creativity is a principal attribute of God and as such, since man is His created being, that creativity in us is a principal attribute as well. This, I believe, is one of the meanings of the expression, "Man is made in the image of God."
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In this section you will discover many creative toys.
They are created as objects that will stimulate in children and their parents a
heightened clarity of who they are, viz., God's created beings, and how they
should live in terms of their own moral code and in their every day
behavior. In this we are not different from authors of books with moral
messages that have been produced over many generations. I recall as a small
child I was shocked and thrilled to discover in the story A Trip to Animal Town
that being grateful and not complaining was actually a very practical way
to get what I wanted in life. The
rabbit
in the
story
was
actually
able
to
get
a ride
to
Animal
Town
instead
of
having
to
walk
all
the
way
in
the
hot
sun.
In our endeavor the morals will be taught in objects, instructions on how to use objects and various editorial notes. |
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Who is this Grampa person, anyway?
I can tell you because I am that "Grampa" that Grampa is much more a function of age than of any biological progeny. Oh, I suppose that there is some family pride at work here too, but essentially when a man gets past the time of life that his occupation is the pressing daily grind it is natural that he begins to think about young people and to explore the ways that the world could be improved a little by actions that he could take. That, I believe, is what a Grampa is. Not all men are given to this, of course. Why, I know lots of men that just keep right on working and never do shut that phase of their life down. Some have to and others want to. Many men, however, are like me. They start to think about the generations that will follow them. |
| Of course, being a Grampa requires some background in being a child. This is a picture of me flying an airplane I made from a Strombecker solid model kit I happily received one Christmas. I can tell you that I was actually piloting this B-25 over enemy territory when the picture was taken. I wasn't even aware that the plane was just a toy or that I was being photographed flying it. This is the important thing that a Grampa needs to know and it is the main qualifying factor. Grampas know that people in general, but especially young children, live beyond the physical dimensions of time and space and can and do actually construct worlds out of their magnificent human attribute of imagination. |  |
| For example, who would seriously doubt the
existence of Santa Claus? I should say, who with a little child would doubt it. We do live beyond the things
that we can perceive with our senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell and
taste. The imagination is beyond these senses and is one of the essential
attributes of the often discussed but seldom fully understood sixth
sense.
If you are not inclined to explore a bit of metaphysics you may want to bypass this next section entitled A Grandfather's Philosophy for Raising Kids. If so just I'll just send you to the actual toys and objects in
our collection A Grandfather's Philosophy For Raising Kids Nearly all adults know that human beings are something more than just an animal. They ask themselves the great philosophical questions like, "Who am I?," "Why am I here?," "What is my purpose?" These are persistent questions in most people's minds. And most people are convinced that animals don't ponder these same questions. A lot of people have seen a squirrel scratching his head but almost none of us think that he is considering the meaning of his life. Knowing that we and the things that we perceive exist is really the first thing that differentiates us from the animals. As Jean-Paul Sartre observed, "The basic philosophic question is that something is there rather than nothing being there." Things do exist and they exist in the form that we see them. Parents and children cannot negotiate life in any form unless they have this basic philosophy. It is simple and basic but profound. But how we live is not the natural outgrowth of simply living. Another profound statement from Sartre is that, "No finite point has any meaning unless it has an infinite reference point." This introduces most of us to the moral component of life. If I'm here, from where did I come? Parents of small children are exposed to many childish questions from their youngsters they confirm that the child is beginning to explore the nuances of human life. For example, eventually parents will hear some form of the question, "What makes the blue sky blue?" Most parents, simply say to their child, "God makes it blue. Some might say Mother Nature makes it blue. Almost no parents (though there probably are a few) try to explain to a 3-year old that it has to do with the length of the light waves with blue the shortest being most prominent during the daytime hours, thus a blue sky. We as parents and grandparents err greatly if we deny that all humans including little children share these sorts of basic philosophical lines of inquiry. All other thought process branch out from these basic principles. Little wonder that Virginia wanted a straight answer to whether or not there was a Santa Clause and little wonder that the editor of the Sun, probably a parent or grandparent gave an astute response to her question. What you should expect from us, from me as a grampa, is that we will create toys and objects that are sensitive to the development of young minds and toward the end that we encourage young people to always ask and get answers to the questions that they occur to them. The three age categories toward which we aim our efforts are: Little People, Middle Children and High School and College Kids. I have
read all that please send me directly to the actual toys and objects. |
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