The Playing’s the Thing : Teacher’s Toy Shop Puts Fun Into Multiethnic Learning

Each weekday, for nine hours a day, Sonia Kiman-Blankenburg works nonstop to give her 30 first-grade kids at Tierrasanta Elementary School the enrichment that makes education more than just a humdrum of basic skills.

Each weekend, for hours at a stretch, the vivacious teacher spends her spare time working to disseminate that enrichment beyond her classroom and into the community at large.

Together with her husband, Gustavo, she has opened an unusual children’s game and book shop in Hillcrest to promote their vision of multiethnic and multicultural learning. From instructional toys about computers disguised as pinball machines, to the black Mother Goose book, to squeeze pillows decorated as globes, the KIDZ shop is a potpourri of items intended to link learning and play.

Blending of Ideals

The 1-month-old store represents the ideals both of her husband, a German-Venezuelan, and Kiman-Blankenburg, a Cuban-born American whose parents early this century emigrated from Eastern Europe to that Caribbean island. Kiman-Blankenburg also served as a race/human relations specialist for the San Diego Unified School District for several years.

“You won’t find any of these toys advertised on television or promoted through cartoons, which is unfortunate,” Kiman-Blankenburg said this week during a break at the 6th Avenue shop. Gustavo runs the shop during the school year, and Kiman-Blankenburg spending her time during winter break waiting on customers and looking for new items to order.

“Buyers at large toy stores have a different consciousness over what they should sell because they want to sell by the dozens and dozens,” Kiman-Blankenburg said, pointing to her preschool puzzles from England that create faces of blacks, Latinos, Caucasians and Asians. A child learns both the parts of the face and acceptance of races by hands-on touching of a black or white part and overcoming fear of a different color, Kiman-Blankenburg said.

“A regular toy buyer wouldn’t try this because the faces are not terribly glamorous like a Barbie doll,” she said.

“In our case, we obviously want to make money, but we insist that the toys and games be healthy in mind and soul for children. They can be healthy, and they can also be fun.”

Prices Are in Line

And, she adds with emphasis, her prices are no more than those for the other types of electronic toys or robot weapons at Toys R Us or similar large chains.

“Have you seen the prices for the Nintendo games?” she asked, referring to this season’s hottest video-game craze.

The couple, with their multicultural backgrounds, emphasize games and books that teach children about other races and cultures. For example, there are music cassettes and videos about songs in other countries. There are books about African, Mexican and Norwegian fairy tales. There are games and puzzles from Brazil, France, Spain as well as the United States.

“I feel very strongly about what we want for our kids’ future,” said Kiman-Blankenburg, referring not only to her first-grade charges but also to the couple’s 2 1/2-year-old son. “What sort of of world do we want our kids to inherit? I believe it is one where kids will accept themselves and others, will like themselves and others, and will know about different cultures and geography.”

The retail store is an outgrowth of the couple’s catalogue business for educational materials that sells to school districts throughout the country. For the past several years, they have traveled around the world examining books and games, and obtaining rights--in many cases exclusive--to sales in the United States.

Counting on Parents

“With the store, we are hoping that parents are becoming more conscious about what they want their children to play with,” Kiman-Blankenburg said. “I hate to prove myself wrong, but I believe that there are parents out there for these types of toys.”

The couple decided to put the store in Hillcrest because of its central location in the metropolitan San Diego area. In particular, they hope to attract, with a large collection of Spanish-language games and books, Latino parents who are interested in having their children learn about their ethnic heritage and their acculturation into U. S. society.

“So many of the toys in regular stores are mindless: battery-operated or watching a robot instead of having the child create or act out themselves,” Kiman-Blankenburg said. “Kids will get lazy and won’t want to work as hard if they don’t have exposure to puzzles and games that make them consider ideas of different people or numbers or whatever.”

But carving out even a small niche among San Diego parents and educators is easier said than done, the couple acknowledges. Advertising so far has been limited to a few community weeklies and Spanish-language papers, and sales have depended largely on word of mouth.

Kiman-Blankenburg has resisted the natural temptation to promote her store at school.

“I do keep things separate,” she said, but many of the toys and books from the store are strewn about her class space within the warehouse-like kindergarten/first-grade multipurpose room at Tierrasanta.

“Sure, I can test the market for some of these materials among the kids, but I don’t discuss my business with other teachers or parents because I don’t feel it would be right.”

Inquiring Students

But some students have approached her wide-eyed after exposure to a certain game or puzzle and asked where their parents could buy it as a birthday or Christmas present. In those cases, Kiman-Blankenburg explains either that her shop exclusively sells the particular item or suggests several stores if it is more widely available.

Two students--a fifth-grader and seventh-grader--browsed the store while Kiman-Blankenburg talked earlier this week. At first, the students seemed confused by how the unusual collection of items compared to a traditional toy store. But their attention was grabbed by the pillow globe, by an erector set for creating modern art a la Picasso sculpture, and by magnetic puzzles.

“At first, even the kids in my own class are confused by some of the toys, especially if they have never had a hands-on toy like a construction set,” Kiman-Blankenburg said. “And, if everything has been battery-run for them, they can get frustrated easily. We find that students who easily get frustrated in class have never been forced to problem-solve.

“You have to show them that learning can be fun.”

Bigger Scope Envisioned

Despite the demands on her time, Kiman-Blankenburg wants to move the store beyond its retail function. She hopes somehow to offer workshops for parents and teachers.