Captain Barnacles and the icebergs!
Little Man is going through a superhero phase right now. When you ask him what he wants to play, his first response is no longer trains or playdough. Instead it’s “let’s be superheroes!” Or sometimes just plain “Supers!”
Charlie and I have two different ideas of what constitutes an appropriate super hero for a toddler. Charlie is keen to pass on his love of Wolverine, Iron Man, and the Green Lantern, while I think those particular heroes should wait a few years and that in the meantime the likes of The Octonauts and Tree Fu Tom are much more age appropriate. (In fact I should probably write a post just about Tree Fu Tom – I’m very impressed by the show’s ability to promote movement. )
Rather than swaying Little Man to one particular set of characters, instead Charlie and I seem to have made him crazy about all of them. But when he plays with Charlie, he likes to play “you be Iron Man, I be Spider Boy!” and when he plays with me it’s “you be Kwazii, I be Captain Barnacles!”
So as a result, I spent half of my weekend play acting the part of a pirate cat with an eye patch, while Little Man was the polar bear captain of the ship.
We have a figurine set of Captain Barnacles as well, and a little ship – a Gup D – that he fits in. When I got tired of racing around the place and pretending to help sick fish, I filled up our sink with water and let Little Man enact his stories with the figurine. To his delight, I added some ice cubes (ahem I mean icebergs!). You’ll be pleased to hear that Captain Barnacles survived his trip through the iceberg filled waters!
The imagination of a toddler is truly entertaining. I can’t wait to see what games next week brings. 🙂
I was wondering how much of Marvel he’d been introduced to 🙂 How has Charlie taken to being Iron Man rather than Wolverine?
 Charlie is whoever he’s told to be when it comes to playing superheroes! More often than not, he’s told to be “Big Bad Baddy” !!
I have to say, Chloe is a fan of Tree Fu Tom as well and jumps around to the moves – I wish more kids cartoons had an active part to them! xx
 Me too. What I really like is how it carries into play too – we spend so much time jumping around to “turn the magic on” during regular play now. It’s great.