A friend of mine posting this ad on one of our mailinglists:

clipped from www.kidzania.co.id
KIDZANIA is a unique EDUTAINMENT CENTER for children between 1 to 13 years old
and their parents.

It is a kid-sized replica of a real city, with
streets, buildings, retail and different vehicles going around the City.

Here, children play adult roles and they learn how to be a doctor, a
pilot, a construction worker, a private detective, an archeologist, an F1 driver
and over 100 other PROFESSIONS and OCCUPATIONS.

There is a replica of
the MOST REPRESENTATIVE BUILDINGS IN A CITY such as Hospital, Supermarket,
Beauty Salon, Theatre, Industrial sites, and many more. (See “City Tour”).

KIDZANIA is a SAFE, INTERACTIVE and HIGHLY EDUCATIONAL
center where kids wear the uniform and perform the role they are playing. Led by
HIGHLY QUALIFIED TEAM, they learn the complexities of the adult world, and learn
the value of money, just as in real life.

In KIDZANIA, kids use our
official currency KIDZOS. Here, children learn to appreciate the value of money,
by performing over 100 professions

  blog it

It does sounds fun, does it? What would i do if i were a parent, would i send my kid to this place? Not a chance. Even if i did earn millions rupiah/month, i wouldn’t waste the money.  First, it is way too expensive for a place for kids to play. For just a role play, why should it be so complicated? And teaching the children to appreciate the value of money since the early age (we’re talking about 5-13 yo) what’s the real point? So, the kid knows that being a doctor will earn you a lot of money instead of thingking being a doctor will saves a lot of lives. Why do we have to on such a hurry introducing our children to the adult world, which is quite mean world to some. Children should stay in their own world. Children’s world.

Building children’s creativity doesn’t have to rely on expensive toys or complicated activities. It can start from simple games like finger paint, sand building, ball playing, hide and seek, etc. I personally can still recall how i enjoyed so much playing in the mud. How i can’t wait for the rain to come so i can play ball under it.

Climbing the tree was another favourite game of me and my friends. We loved to pretend that we were in some deserted island, middle of nowhere, and trying to rescue ourselves. We don’t play with advance technology, (forget play station, just to watch Gaban, a japanese robot series on a video, we have to watch it from a next-door house with a bunch of other kids) but we were very creative making our own technology. We can make and fly our own ”fighting” kite and its special threads.

Movies such Bridge to Terabhitia and The Cure ( it’s a must  seen movies for parents), has reminded me how the children could be very creative with the things surround them and how the nature could provide them  with such.

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