The benefits of wooden toys

Hello all!

This week I thought I’d take a closer look at some of our toys and you’ll notice that many are wooden toys. This isn’t just because the they look good (though they do!) but because there are many benefits to playing with wooden toys.

Firstly,  wooden toys are beautifully crafted and durable – the very best can be handed down from generation to generation. And as they are much harder to break than plastic toys, their playing shelf life happily extends through several children (and their friends!)

There is also something wonderfully warm about wood, being an organic, tactile, natural material. No one could ever convince me that a wooden shape sorter isn’t superior to a plastic one or that wooden play food isn’t more satisfying that its plastic equivalent.

And what about wooden toys as educational toys? A good wooden toy will provide plentiful opportunities for leaning and playing and can unlock a child’s imagination and creativity. So for example, our beautiful wooden jigsaws are not only great fun to piece together but are perfect for developing fine motor skills, problem-solving skills, developing colour recognition and for learning about numbers and the alphabet.

And take our traditional Noah’s Arks. These are wonderful educational toys which initially help with animal names and sounds and then grow with your child as they discover the wonders of role-play. I love watching my youngest marching the animals up the ramp sharing conversations and for some reason the giraffes often end up dancing together (actually it just occurs to me this must be Gerald‘s doing – do read Giraffe‘s Can‘t Dance if you haven‘t already done so and all will be clear)!

Wooden toys also offer an opportunity to be good to the environment. All of our Pintoy and Wood Like to Play products are made from sustainable and environmentally-friendly rubberwood taken from trees only cut down once they are no longer producing enough sap (used to make rubber). These trees would previously have been burnt back at this point but they are now harvested and put to secondary use. This makes Pintoy toys and Wood Like to Play jigsaws not only great fun but long-lasting, eco-friendly gifts.