Middle class gifts for middle class children

[Catherine468]

Light hearted, please don’t get ranty. I’m not interested enough to argue.

Have you ever seen a more middle class gift for a middle class child in a toy shop than this? Made me chuckle…
photo pending

My child is 4 and he does not have a special interest in lichen, but he does fucking love nature (among other things) and he was very excited when I took him to get a free apple tree to plant in our garden from a local environmental charity. He announced that it was a special day called 'free fruit tree day', and carried the tree into the back garden to introduce it (by name) to the other apple tree we already have. He then 'helped' me to plant it. If he had a book about lichen, I doubt if he would obsess over it, but he would from time to time get enthusiastic about spotting it in the garden and the woods. It would be a good way to lure him out on dog walks.

@DownyEmerald thanks for Natural Navigator recommendation. DS is a bit little for it, but I think DP actually has a copy of that, and I might look up the types of lichen later on.

@ImImmortalNowBabyDoll
Nonsense, plenty of kids have an interest in the environment

My kid recently bought a new book about rocks. Kids like all kind of stuff, get over yourself.

The lichen book has arrived - it is really sweet! DS does like it (contrary to the pp's insistence that no child would) and we spotted 3 types just walking home from school. I will not, however, be posting any profound quotes that he has about nature.
Although when the boiler engineer remarked on the changeable weather a few minutes ago DS did pipe up "well that's March for you".

The lichen book has arrived - it is really sweet! DS does like it (contrary to the pp's insistence that no child would) and we spotted 3 types just walking home from school. I will not, however, be posting any profound quotes that he has about nature.
Although when the boiler engineer remarked on the changeable weather a few minutes ago DS did pipe up "well that's March for you".

I'd have loved this book - far better than i-Spy books (as we never went anywhere, so the requirement to see things made them pointless, what with being a council house guttersnipe poor).

Lichen is amazing!

It's a symbiote, where a fungus and an algae or cyanobacteria form a composite organism with the fungus proving the structure and the algae providing the food through photosynthesis.

There have recently been studies that show a third organism, a wild yeast, is also part of lichen. So it's a naturally occurring Frankenstein of two or three completely different types of organism combining into one.

They are also "pioneer organisms" - the first form of life to colonise spaces.

They are extremely complicated and fascinating things, and yet are all around us and mostly ignored.

(And yes, reindeer and caribou do eat it in the winter, making 60-70% of their winter diet)

Take a wild guess about the neuro divergent status of one of my kids... 😉

My kind of person 🤩
and since my 6yo joined beavers he’s obsessed with all things outdoors and would love this! We are definitely not MC

I’m a very educated working-class woman and my DC would have liked a book of this kind.

Tell him about lichen!

In the words of my then-5yo, "it's like when the Power Rangers join up into a Megazord, but it's in real life and it's tiny."

I wouldn’t really call it a gift though?

Well obviously you also stick a recipe book for simple pesto from natural ingredients and a child sized wooden pestle and mortar in the gift bag too.