Do your schools allow nintendo ds to be brought in?

[loler]

I think I must be very backwards but I was quite surprised that dc primary school are letting year 3 and above bring in nintendo ds for play time. I've got two concerns -

The first is that DD hasn't got one and it's already been raised by a couple of 'lovely' dc from our road. I think it's a potential low level bullying target (branded trainers are banned for PE but it's OK to bring in an expensive toy ).

Secondly if she did have one I'm not sure that I would let her take it to school. It's an expensive toy and if it got broken or lost I would be very angry. I feel it's a lot of responsibility to lay on a 7 year old (as for ds1 I can barely rely on him to remember his coat!)

Am I being over the top and should just get with the times (I had to think twice about sending in top trumps last year!)

Not a chance in hell!!!

If it's raining, we have this amazing thing called a library. It has these weird old fashioned things called "books". For those that really can't cope with such antiques, we have classrooms full of "paper" and "crayons". The last refuge for our holdouts to technology are the large indoor sports stadium, undercroft, undercover assembly area or the gym. These venues have things called "balls" and "bats" which can be utilised to avoid the boredom of a whole lunch hour without electronic stimulation.

Yes and these books and libraries cost more money than 400 iPads the indoor sports thing is kinda okay but still it costs more money to build it than get it on a videogame parents just don't admit that technology can do more things inside than their old ways.

All schools have a library and a hall they can do sports in for lessons anyway, don't they? So the schools wouldn't be buiding them just for wet-play, so getting it on a video game doesn't work out cheaper unless you are suggesting videogames replace traditional PE lessons and library visits.

DD is alowed to take in colouring stuff and puzzle books to keep in her tray incase its too wet to go out, DSs school organises suff for them to do like board games in one classroom, a classroom for quiet activities (reading, drawing etc) and another classroom with paper and crayons left out, which usually means highly decorated paper planes and hangman on the whiteboard. Given how often my 2 lose/forget things, no way in hell would i let them take a nintendo ds in even if they weren't banned!

Yeah but it's your job as a parent to remind them libraries should just be considered hangout spots because a ipad can do what a library does but it's better and portable and no I am not saying videogames should replace pe.

Ah, I don't think an ipad is better so no it's not my job as a parent to teach them that at all. I was just saying your point about libraries and books costing more than ipads didn't seem relevant as schools aready have books and libraries.

We made the decision a couple of years ago to allow KS1 children to bring in toys for playtimes on the understanding that it is at their own risk. It has been a very successful policy. We have found that the less sociable children have been able to make inroads in friendship groupings through their toys, and we have had a remarkable drop in minor playground 'incidences'.

However, the risks associated with bringing Nintendos to school (theft, breakage, damage) would be huge! That is madness! It hardly encourages sociable and imaginative play either!

We have ipads. One for every student in the school actually. All classrooms also have their own bank of computers, interactive smart boards, video cameras, wi-fi and DSLR cameras for students to use.

Amazingly, despite all the access to technology our students have, there's always a big group of them gathered in the library on "new book day" to see what is in the boxes of new books that are delivered thanks to a kind parent (whose children left the school eight years ago) that works for a publishing company and gets several new boxes of books delivered every month. We have several big cupboards of sports equipment around the school that is opened at lunchtime for students to use. We even supply big bits of chalk for kids to draw their own hopscotch and other games on the concrete. In warmer months, all students can bring their swimming costumes to school and get in the pool at lunch time (fully supervised) and year six students can actually go to the beach at lunchtime twice a week.

We don't have any kids skulking around looking for their electronic toys. But then, we actually encourage them to go outside or do physical activities. Perhaps it is a culture thing. I can't imagine anyone at our school encouraging children to plug in to an ipad and ignore the rest of their peers. Even when we do work on the ipads, it's usually in a collaborative format.