If your parents (or grandparents) are of a certain age, they may remember a time when the only toys available for children were made of wood. Before brightly colored plastic and gadgets that light up or make sounds, there were sustainable wooden toys, trucks, blocks, and puzzles — no batteries or recharging necessary!
Now, however, there are so many toys for parents and grandparents to choose from that it can be overwhelming to pick out that perfect gift for your little one. While it can be exciting to give the latest, trendiest gadget that your children have seen on YouTube, we can almost guarantee that the shiny new toy won’t last as long or make as many memories as simple, time-tested sustainable wooden toys.
Why Wood?
There are several benefits to choosing wooden toys and gifts over plastic: they’re more durable, sustainable, cheaper, safer, and healthier, among other advantages. Unlike plastic, most wooden toys don’t have chemicals or paint that are unhealthy for children to be exposed to. (Did you know? Even some big toy brands’ mass-manufactured wooden toys have been found to have coatings and paint that could be toxic!)
Wooden Toys Are Durable
Do you still have wooden toys from your childhood? Or toys that were passed down from your parents? If so, you already know about how durable wooden toys can be. They don’t require batteries, they won’t break into small shards of plastic when dropped or thrown, and they can be played with over and over without fading, cracking, or becoming obsolete.
Wooden Toys Are Less Expensive
The purchase price point of wooden toys is not only lower than their plastic counterparts, but they’re also cheaper to own over their lifetime. They don’t need major repair and in many cases, if the wooden toys are solid without any moving parts, they don’t need any repair at all.
Wooden Toys Are Sustainable
Because they do last so long, there’s a much smaller number of wooden toys (compared to plastic) that end up in the landfill. Sustainable wood sources mean sustainable wooden toys, especially when that wood is harvested responsibly. Wooden toys are usually handcrafted, meaning they don’t spend any time in manufacturing facilities that expand a carbon footprint.
Wooden Toys Are Healthier
Babies and toddlers love to explore the world around them, and that means touching, feeling, holding, and even tasting toys. Which would you rather have your little one put in its mouth — plastic or wood? Quality wooden toys don’t leak chemicals and are easy to clean and disinfect.
Wooden Toys Boost Imagination
If you’ve ever marveled over a young child playing with the box that their gift came in instead of the actual gift, you already know that toys don’t need bells and whistles. In fact, there are a staggering number of studies that show too many features can have a negative impact on the brain and make it harder for children to think critically.
Wooden Toys Can Help With Learning
Something as simple as wooden blocks provides unstructured playtime, without the structure or stress of toys that must be manipulated in certain ways to work. Wooden toys that have words or letters encourage early literacy learning, even for babies and toddlers who can’t yet fully read. Wooden toys are a wonderful supplemental learning tool.
Wooden Toys Build STEM Skills
Let’s use the blocks for another example: STEM-related learning. These blocks are a great representation of the world around us, but on a smaller scale. Children can learn about how buildings are built and engineered, how many blocks it takes to build a castle, or how high a structure can be before gravity takes over. All of this helps improve science, engineering, and math skills.
Wooden Toys Can Be Customizable
As if you didn’t already have enough reasons to choose sustainable wooden toys for your next gift-giving celebration, think about how they can be customized or personalized. Adding a name or special phrase to your wooden toys or gifts shows the recipient how much time and thought you put into picking that gift.
So why choose wood — and why choose us? Hollow Woodworks builds our stools and puzzles in our shop in Ferguson, Missouri. The quality and attention to detail for all of our products remain a benchmark in the industry. All of our paints, finishes, and wood are child-safe and made in the United States.
We offer several different versions of our name stools with lots of options for customers to customize colors and themes. We also sell a variety of children’s puzzles, toys, and toy boxes. In recent years, we’ve added a line of home décor items such as custom wood hanging art, monograms, and letters. Every item is crafted to order, so no two are alike. Puzzle pieces and the name stool letters have a lifetime guarantee, which even covers the loss. If a letter or puzzle piece is lost, we will replace it for free. Shop online for your next gift today!