When we look around our children’s and baby’s playrooms and bedroom, how many of their toys are traditional wood toys? I bet there are quite a few. Wooden name plates and letters on bedroom doors, wooden jigsaws and puzzles, wooden trains, building blocks and musical instruments to name just a few. Even our children’s jewellery is beautiful in wood. Yes, wood is back, actually it never really went away and has a long and varied history for being a popular material for making toys.

Even between the dark and middle ages children used wooden handmade spinning tops, puppets and hobby horses. Spinning tops, draughtsmen and gaming pieces were buried in Egyptian tombs as early as 2000-1000 B.C.

Wooden jigsaws were first produced by map makers in the 1760’s. Today wooden jigsaws are still popular as ever and are cut to suit the ability of specific age groups such as puzzles with large pieces and uncomplicated pictures for children. The earliest recorded wooden dolls house was made for Albert V, Duke of Balvaria between 1550 and 1579.

Simple wooden construction toys designed to produce model villages, farms and buildings were made in Germany at the end of the 18th century. These toys grew out of rural craftsmanship. Building blocks were and still are considered educational because they enable children to play imaginatively constructing and creating their own versions of things they see around them. Boxes of rectangular, triangular and cylindrical bricks made of oak or beech were produced by a number of makers in the 19th Century. Lego was founded by Earl Kirkman in 1934 and was originally made of wood.

Wooden trains were the first form of modern transport to be copied as toys and pull-alongs. World War II increased demand for model aircraft and parents resorted to making home made wooden toys as gifts for children. Early boats were also made from wood and fitted with removable wheels so that they could be sailed across the floor.

Many of us 21st century parents have realised the traditional and classic wooden toys are not only more robust and reliable but provide a light relief from all today’s techno craze and computer games which often result in children sitting in front of personal computers or televisions for hours each day. Traditional wooden toys permit children to use their own imagination and play in a way which benefit’s them educationally.

Toys are a vitally important element of any childhood, stimulating both physical skills and helping to develop creative imaginations. Many wooden toys not only enable children to do this but in addition the hardwearing nature of wooden toy products means they have the chance of being passed on to our children’s children and beyond. If I look at my children’s toys today I cannot help but notice that the toys they have inherited and which have survived from my own childhood are all made of wood, my pull along snoopy sniffer and my mosaic wood blocks plus a little construction toy wood soldier are all still now enjoyed by my own children, nearly thirty years on from the date they were new. I think this speaks for itself. Many wooden toys have the benefit of lasting year upon year, many generation to generation.

Modern environmental concerns are making us think twice about the products that we buy, including the toys we buy as gifts and presents for our babies and children. Therefore wooden toys are increasing in popularity for being more eco friendly and green compared to plastic and synthetic toy products, especially now more manufacturers are using wood from carefully selected and replenishable sources. The fact that making toys from wood may also help protect the world in which we live compared to other toy making materials can only be an added bonus.

Today there is endless choice when choosing wooden toys as gifts for children and babies. My Dolly and Me offers a fantastic range of wood toys from building blocks, puzzles, maracas, castanets, drums, easels, fire engines, diggers, dolls houses, children’s furniture, to smaller items like spinning tops, play watches and whistles, to name just a few.

With such a fabulous range of wooden toys available I am pretty sure wood will remain a popular material of choice for toy makers and customers for many generations to come and cannot be beaten in its durability, looks and quality. Ask the Egyptians – they started this never ending craze and today we have even more reasons to purchase wooden toys.