The Benefits of Wooden Toys for Kids
The purpose of this post is to highlight the features and benefits of wooden toys for babies and children, focusing on the several reasons why you should use them for your little ones.
SENSORY EXPERIENCE
In addition to being soothing, wooden toys appeal to a baby's sense of touch since they are smooth, warm, and tactile. Toys made of plastic are usually cool and hard to hold. You'll want to make sure your baby's toys appeal to, and gratify their senses in the most effective way, especially their sense of touch (but even toddlers and children benefit from this).
A wooden teething ring or rattle are great first wooden toys for a newborn baby. Simple wooden toys are great in helping your baby to develop fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination as they grow older. When your baby turns into a toddler, a wooden pull-along toy keeps him/her entertained for hours!
SAFETY
A baby or child should only play with toys that are safe, especially since babies love to put things in their mouth! Chemicals and harmful substances, including BPAs and phthalates, are found in many plastic toys, while some can even contain traces of lead in the paint! Meanwhile, wood is a natural material that is safe for babies, with some species containing antibacterial properties as well. A wooden toy is also more durable, and breaks far less often than plastic toys, as well as being easier to fix when an accident occurs. When plastic toys break, sharp, jagged edges often remain behind, posing a danger to babies and children.
AESTHETICALLY PLEASING
Sustainability and aesthetics can go hand in hand here at Pink Blue Baby Shop. The beauty of wooden toys is unmatched by plastic toys. It is important that our children have lovely things and that the toys and materials around them are appealing to them so that they will be drawn to play with and explore them. Like adults, children should also benefit from beautiful materials that are aesthetically pleasing.
As a family, we find that wooden toys are so much more pleasing to the eye as they fit much more readily into the shared communal areas in our house like the living room so that they complement our decor rather than distract from it.
QUALITY OF PLAY
It's so much easier to play imaginatively with wooden toys. Due to their simpler design, and less distractions from things like sounds and lights, they are less 'formed', and therefore allow your kids to explore more! As children develop their motor skills and language skills, imaginative play is crucial because it develops their problem-solving abilities, promotes language development, and enhances fine motor skills. By the time our daughter became a toddler, she created 'characters' for his wooden animals and toys, stacked and built his wooden toys in a variety of ways and developed his motor skills from the beginning, having been exposed to wooden toys and sensory baskets. Toys made of wood are more suited to babies and young children as they are able to move them and make sounds themselves, as opposed to battery-operated toys.
SUSTAINABILITY
Wood is a resource that is environmentally friendly and sustainable. Choosing wooden toys for children and babies is the most important reason to do so. It is vitally important. Wooden toys are more environmentally friendly, recyclable, and biodegradable since they come from a naturally renewable resource.
Wooden toys because they are built to last and are typically passed from generation to generation. In a way that plastic toys do not, wooden toys lend themselves to being passed down through generations as heirloom toys. Baby and toddler toys made from wood do not tend to be 'throwaway' toys. If you pass them on to someone else as an heirloom or donate them, they will remain in a good useable condition for years to come!
Check out our WOODEN TOYS collection.