Natural toy ideas
October 21, 2007 by Sherry Osborne
Filed under Parenting
With all the lead paint scares lately with one recall after another, I’m pretty much tempted to just throw everything out and give my kids cardboard boxes for Christmas. I often joke to my husband that instead of giving them toys, we should just give them a container of lead paint and cut out the middle man – that’s how I deal with things, I use inappropriate humor. But honestly, my kids got a lot of nice toys lately, especially my oldest since she just had a birthday last month, and as much as I love them (especially the Diego Rescue center and the Barbie vet playset), I worry.
Tree Hugging Family is another blog in our network that focuses on the greener side of family life, and Jennifer recently posted about Seasons Natural Toys which is a line of toys that uses completely non toxic finishes and inspires imagination.
The treehouse that Jennifer posted is particularly charming. Look at this!
It is so ridiculously cute. My daughter has a plastic treehouse that I had as a child back in the 70s and early 80s and it’s actually held up quite well over the years and it’s a fun toy. But this wooden one is even nicer.
I’ve always liked wooden toys and we have a serious shortage of them in our home, though I don’t know why. I used to have wooden dollhouses, wooden train and car sets, and I loved them. I’m thinking of picking up some wooden toys for Christmas.
Does your family play with natural product toys or are you overrun with plastic like us? Any suggestions on some good starter things for a 2-year-old and 5-year-old?
My kids have used toys – is that a catagory? We have a small house so I try not to keep too many toys. I buy toys at garage sales.
I bought a really expensive wooden train set at a garage sale for $1. But, it’s in the shed because it took up too much space and I was tired of picking it up.
My 2 year old loves the Melissa and Doug wooden toys – all nontoxic and good quality – especially the mailbox! They also have great wooden car sets and puzzles
Thanks for the link
I LOVE these toys. They are some of the most charming wooden toys I’ve seen. We have a lot of wooden and natural type toys but also some plastic toys. I don’t love them but since we unschool I don’t like to limit what Cedar has to experiment with — I really don’t love the safety aspects of the plastic toys though.