I think I must have spent thousands of hours observing children’s play and the way in which they use toys.  I can’t lie, I’ve yet to meet a two year old who isn’t delighted by one of those enormous, plastic bubble cars – but that is only one sort of play.  The best sort of play sees young children using and incorporating a variety of toys (and indeed general household items) to support their imaginative and exploratory role-play.  I hope you find something appealing in the following selection of children’s wooden toys from Our Green Shop.  All of these wooden toys are made from sustainable rubber wood.  Click here to view this collection below and much more besides.

Among my favourites are the wooden fruit box and  wooden vegetable box, I know from experience that these are a real winner with all children and that that you will get hours of play value out of them.  I keep trying to pass ours on to younger family members but Goldilocks, now ten, still insists on fishing them out to support her imaginative games.  I paid £15 for ours five years ago, they are still retailing at that price here  which I think represents great value.  The Fire Engine Push-Along trolley complete with bricks is one of those real heirloom wooden toys, it’s the sort of wooden toy that gets saved for future generations, it is a timeless classic which will be universally loved. 

As you can see there is a choice of wooden doll’s houses.  A traditional dolls’ house and the eco-dolls’ house complete with wind turbine, though both will stimulate rich ‘small world’ play.  The dolls’ houses are supplied with furniture and the dolls included in the price.  Boys and girls alike are drawn to play cookers and washing machines, I guess little toddlers have worked out these are key elements of any working home!  You can enrich the play by rigging up a washing line, little children love pegging stuff out or by supplying pots and pans full of store cupboard ingredients that are past their best – I promise you hours of happy, if slightly messy, play if you do this!

Related post: wooden dolls house

During the pregnant pause between being childless and becoming a parent for the first time, dewy-eyed we imagine ourselves buying aesthetically pleasing, FSC sourced, hand-painted, non-toxic wooden toys that we can pass on to our grandchildren. We want to buy toys that will give our homes the pleasant randomness of a scene from an Ikea catalogue.   

Ha!  The real mess made by children never has the pleasant randomness of an Ikea catalogue, that is wholly contrived and designed, children just make messy mess.   Even more disappointingly, at some point, what every two year old really wants to do is to squeeze their tiny frame into one of those hideously moulded plastic ‘Little Tikes’ bubble cars and animatedly zoom off like they’re in the wacky races.

It is likely to be one of the sticking points in the upcoming Copenhagen Summit later this year that China will argue (reasonably) that it’s all very well the West telling them to cut CO2 emissions when we outsource all of our production (and therefore our emissions) to China.  We import tonnes of plastic toys every year from China, and it’s a fair bet that once our fickle toddlers have had their ‘wacky races’ moment the hideous plastic will find its useless way into our landfill.   

Far better then to buy only one bubble car and share it with hundreds of other toddlers over a period of years.  Toy Libraries are fantastic, you can borrow toys for a fraction of the sum you would have to pay for a new one, you don’t have to worry about storage, (these bubble cars need garages built for them!) and when the toy’s novelty has worn off you give it back.  The staff will clean it and check it over for faults before passing it on to the next happy recipient.  Toy Libraries often have access to educational toys, or those designed with special needs in mind, that most parents simply couldn’t afford or access elsewhere.  Toy Libraries are a levelling presence in the unequal lives of small people.

To find out more about toy libraries either make enquiries with your local authority or visit The National Association of Toy and Leisure Libraries website.  If you don’t already have a toy library near you they will give you help and support in getting one started. 

You might also be interested in cardboard house: sustainably sourced and compostable play houses for children and childrens wooden toys made from sustainable rubber wood.