Easter’s coming and many of you are struggling with finding a perfect, universal present for children. It is not as easy as it seems especially with such a huge toy offer these days. I have already written about it and maybe you will find that blog helpful.
It’s not only about Easter! Any other holiday or occasion deserves the best present for the youngest ones. Toys represent mental food for our babies. They have a task to help children develop their mental and motor skills to get ready for real life.
Should you decide on a healthy, eco-friendly toy is very commendable not only for the sake of your child’s health but also for the healthy surroundings they live in. That’s two flies with one blow! Perfect!
Natural Wooden Building Blocks
My husband, Milos, is a civil engineer. He likes making and building things. His passion is creating something from nothing. He likes using and reusing, zero waste products and all of his creations are for kids. And the story of wooden blocks is mostly his and I am only the writer.
In my very first blog on this site, I introduced my family. You can read the blog here because I am tired of repeating things over and over again at school. So definitely, I am not going to do that here.
Anyway, our kids were babies at the time we had our wood shop and each toy was tested by them before making a series and selling it out. Natural wooden blocks were among their favourite toys.
With natural wooden toys, you have to make sure that they are well sanded, are smooth and don’t have sharp edges. Also, you have to be careful with the dimensions! So we would closely inspect and watch our children play with the blocks for days. It was the most tiresome work of all. We didn’t dare take our eyes off the children. Luckily, our products proved to be of perfect dimensions.
From the Point of a Manufacturer
From this point of view, our first goal when we started making wooden blocks was to get nature closer to children. Children around us mostly played with plastic toys, cold, smooth, even, sharp, shiny and noisy and most of the time they ended up broken leaving the parents in panic that kids might hurt themselves.
Therefore, we wanted something different, we wanted warmth, natural textures, safety and durability. We definitely did the right thing. We made different shapes, chose different types of wood in order to get different colours and even packed them in natural cloth bags.
We sold them really well! For older children, people asked us to paint them as kids like colours. With a lot of strenuous market research, we managed to supply our little shop with non-toxic colours which were safe both for kids and the environment.
Then, another idea sprang from this request. Kids can practice their artistic skills and can paint the blocks themselves. This idea tops up all the advantages of these natural building blocks. Let’s revise the advantages of this product.
For the youngest ones, the building blocks represent an important discovery of the shapes and geometric bodies. Natural elements and textures evoke an exploring spirit that makes children eager to inspect the world around them. Then combining skills come to practice. Children start combining elements, thus involving their minds in serious jobs of creating and designing.
Dexterity, eye-hand coordination, motor, mental and practical skills are all very involved in children’s play with wooden blocks. Children take their play very seriously thus they apply as many skills as they are able.
Let Them Think Outside the box!
There were several grandmas who regularly bought presents for their grandchildren at our craft shop. They were clever enough to choose natural, wooden toys, but what they wanted more was a kind of manual for kids to use. They claimed that children needed some kind of instructions and photos to look at while playing with wooden blocks.
We felt that a kind of explanation was needed at this point. On one hand, people were in a good way to bring nature to their children’s hands but on the other hand, they wanted to shape them. For that reason, we issued a small booklet with some handy pieces of advice.
Children need to express their imagination and convey their message through this kind of play. The last thing they need, especially at this age, is to be shaped. Consequently, we put a few photos that we thought would be inspiring and stimulate kids’ imagination.
However, with this kind of product, children should express their imagination and creativity and not necessarily make things that Milos or Nevena, or anyone else wanted them to make. Please don’t do this to your kids! At least not from such young age. Let them be who they are and show what they want to show you. That is exactly how they find out their true way for their future.
The Point of View of a Parent
As a parent, I couldn’t agree more with all the manufacturers, my husband, says. What I can add is that we should never be sorry for spending money on such kinds of toys that are natural and healthy, safe for our children’s health and environment. We all should live healthily and we are directly connected and dependable on a clean environment. So let’s keep it clean!
Another point of view of a parent is that with wooden toys, children are closer to nature and learn to respect it. By inheriting them from older brothers and sisters, they become aware of the durability of toys and of the importance to share. Taking care of their toys, nature and the environment for their younger siblings is very clear.
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Practising all those skills makes our children develop correctly and find out their likes and dislikes. In this way, they will be able to choose their future education and jobs.
To Sum up as a Teacher
Besides all the skills mentioned so far, the most important one is learning to live a real life, full of surprises and turnovers. Kids have to learn what to do and whom to call when a tower suddenly falls down or how to express their emotions when a baby brother or sister accidentally knocks down the whole city that they have been making for half an hour.
Emotions are a part of every play. Through the play, children express their happiness, sadness, fear, dissatisfaction, pride and many other emotions that are more or less evident but present and important.
Life is a big adventure that comes without instructions or manuals, so let your kids get used to living a real life.
