Melanie Nilles

Don’t dish out the dough for expensive toys. Here are some tried and true and CHEAP favorites that preschoolers often prefer to those fancy toys:

1. Play-Doh. It can keep a kid entertained for hours, especially if you invest in a set with different shapes.

2. Bubbles. Bubbles. Bubbles! Kids love blowing bubbles. They’re cheap and they’re fun. And it’s a great outdoor activity, especially when they chase the bubbles. Whether you blow and they chase, or they blow the bubbles, themselves, it’s worth a lot of fun.

3. Balls. Bouncing balls can provide a long time of imaginative play, from games to simply bouncing on a large ball, kids get creative and find many uses.

4. Crayons and paper. Kids love art! They especially love to scribble and it’s a great way for them to practice holding a writing utensil, which they will need in order to start writing skills.

5. Scissors and paper. Preschoolers LOVE to cut things. Be sure you give them only kid-safe scissors with no more than 2 inch blades and blunted ends. Give them paper and let them have at it. But don’t turn you back, because they like to experiment on things other than paper.

6. Brown paper bags. The small sandwich bags are perfect for little hands to use them as puppets. Give them some crayons and let them draw faces and make their own puppet show!

7. Paper towel rolls. The inner rolls can be made into anything with your imagination, but most often, what a preschooler will want most is to look through them like a telescope. They can be pirates or stargazers, or even jedi

8. Sand. The sandBOX or TABLE to contain it will cost more but playground sand is fairly cheap, as are the toys to make castles and anything else kids can imagine.

9. Water. A tub or basin with just a couple inches of water and some cups will turn into a mess, but it’s only water. And kids love to play in water.

10. Pots, pans, mixing spoons. We already have them in our house, but these transform into drums, microphones, and myriad other imaginary items.

11. Boxes. Kids love boxes, especially when they can sit in them. With imagination, boxes turn into cars, buses, boats, and slides (especially if you have a laminate floor )

12. Bubble wrap. At least while they still have something to pop, preschoolers love stomping or jumping on it.

13. Cannisters. Either the old Quaker Oatmeal cannisters or those that nuts or formula come in make great drums. Maybe not for adult ears, but kids love to make noise.

14. Puzzles. Not all preschoolers like them, but if you start out easy, many will grow to love them. You can also make your own puzzles with pictures, cardboard, glue and scissors.

I hope this gives you parents out there some ideas. From my experience as a daycare provider, these are the “toys” that I have found to keep kids entertained far longer than expensive toys. (The other toys kids like, but which cost more, are wooden blocks to build with, Duplo’s by Lego(tm), Mega-Bloks, and other similar building blocks.)

So, save your money on toys kids will only like for a short time anyway.

So, here I am, two books in the works, so far. One is in the process of being edited, and the other is almost at the printer.

Dragon Prophecy was originally scheduled for January, but it looks like it’ll be this month. Dark Angel was scheduled for this month, but it looks like June, or possibly July. No word yet on Dragon Legends, which is tentatively scheduled for July. I wouldn’t count on it being on time, at the moment.

In the meantime, I’m still writing. I have a completed YA manuscript that needs serious rewriting for the second half and at least two novel WIPs, N1 with 18K words written to date and N2 with 31K to date. I also have a novelette submitted to the Writers of the Future contest, which I am still qualified to enter. There’s one of the benefits of not having an advance or a print run I can be published, but not by the contest definition.

My writing life is busy, but that comes after my personal life. Personal life involves kids, husband, and horses. Somewhere I also find time for friends, but it’s unfortunate that they come after everything else. I rarely see my friends any more, except for the friends I’ve made at the stable where I board my horse. I don’t count them as friend friends but as horsey friends, because when we see each other, it involves horses. So, when I say I don’t see friends, I mean the friends I can hang around in any situation and share things with from any part of my life.

Now that I’ve rambled on, I’ll let you go back to your life. But stop by any time to see what’s new. And, until Dragon Prophecy is released, I will continue the snippets, which I hope you’re enjoying, every weekend. This weekend’s may be late, but I’ll do my best to have it posted by Sunday night.

I think I’m going to love the editor for Dark Angel. She’s thorough and pointing out dialogue problems, confusing wording, and certainly the words I repeat (Admit it, we all have “favorite” words.) Luckily, it hasn’t been too bad, so far.

I wonder what she’ll think as she gets further in. What scenes will she suggest I change, if any? The whole story moves at a good pace with some speeding up at the end. Originally, there was place where it sloooowwweeedd way down. I…ah…revised that. Said editor will only see the newer version, in which case, the pacing may be too fast, at least it seems that way to me. I’ll wait for her opinion.

She’s giving it to me in chunks, which is easier to digest so far. Considering this book will be probably 2 months behind it’s schedule (probably going to be June before it’s available since we’re already into April), I’m working on it as I get it from her. I would rather it be a little late than to rush through and not edit it to be the best it can. I’ve done a lot of work already, but her input has been better than my beta reader’s (who looked at the overall story and said that if she had found science fiction like this when she was young, she would have gotten into it sooner

The coolest part? In a few places in dialogue, she suggested a change I wanted to make already. A lot of her suggestions were better than what I had, but there are always places I can’t agree, since I know the characters better too.

Dark Angel will definitely be better in the end, but there was no question about that.

It’s coming! Dragon Prophecy is in the final stages of production and will soon be available for pre-order from Mundania Press. I’m not sure it will be up as quickly for pre-order on retail sites, but it won’t be long after until it is actually available.