Something they can really sink their teeth into

There is just something so reassuring about these natural toys that we’ve recently purchased. I love that I can let me kids play freely with them– gum them, suck on them, chew them to their little heart’s content– and I don’t have to be worried about the toxic substances that they are ingesting!

Since the spring, I’ve been using a lot of the gift money we had from Christmas and birthdays for the kids to start purchasing a few heirloom quality, wooden, non-toxic toys for them (in addition to a couple that we bought at Christmas). Naturally, these toys are more expensive, but I’m delighted that I’ve found an online store, Oompa Toys, with a selection and prices that I am really pleased with!

Here are the latest additions to our home:

(Do you like how I purposefully placed a few stray items just to give my perpetually immaculate home more of that lived in, yes-I-have-children look? What? You don’t believe me? You think it always looks that way? I’m deeply wounded… 🙂

Seriously though, aren’t they great? The little wooden cow is actually a gift for someone, because our gorilla from the same set was somewhere in the car, probably under a car seat with a few raisins stuck to him.

My son is just all over the train and little blue car, and we (with the help of two Grandmas) just gave him the walker for his first birthday and he loved it! The yellow box inside the walker contains a fun preschool game with wooden pieces, and we’ve played it many a night with our daughter (she also has the cutest little wooden ice cream cone for her kitchen, but it was left at a friend’s house).

I’ll admit, these toys are pricier than most. The thing that makes them worth it to us is that they will actually make it through multiple children, unlike most cheapo plastic toys that bust after a few months (or poison my child with lead, whichever comes first). We feel good about these toys, about their safety, and about the companies that we are supporting.

The way that I’ve been making this work for us financially is to use gift money from grandparents (and great-grandparents), and as we purchase more things, we can get rid of some of their other toys. Buying toys that are more expensive and removing unsafe toys should also help to keep the clutter to more of a minimum, and let me tell you how happy that makes me!

The next thing that I would like to try is making my own toys, which I have heard a lot about, but just don’t really know where to start. Does anyone have any recommendations of sites or books with ideas and patterns? That would be fabulous!