Time to start buying your Christmas Shopping?
Really? It's only July I hear you cry! However all the experienced mums out there, know that your friends at the playgroups, softplay or down at the splashpark will beging to start talking about Christmas right now.

Kmart have commissioned a survey in Austrialia that shows that mother's in Australia spend around $1160 on toys per year. They are promoting their July toy sales as a way to get good value for money.

The same is true the world over, starting to put toys away in July as Christmas present, will relieve the stress when it gets to November. Have a look through our online toy store for further inspiration!

What’s the Perfect Traditional Gift?
Grandparents often want to make a big gesture to their grandchildren. In this day and age birthday presents often consist of electronic games consoles, DVDs, CDs and MP3 players but for those of you that want to give a traditional present, what is the best gift?

Wooden Rocking Horse – A Rocking horse is a perfect gift as unlike a ride on or a wooden bike, it is stationary which makes it ideal for smaller spaces. Children who love see-saws at the play park will be especially delighted with a rocking horse.

Wooden Dolls House – All children, boys and girls alike, adore a dolls house. Children have an endless imagination when it comes to what is essentially a wooden box with a hinged door. Little girls may play with it as if it is a house or a cooker, whereas little boys may treat it like a garage for their cars.

Train Sets – an oft neglected gift, you will find that children who love puzzles and building bricks get the same sort of delight from a train set. Putting the pieces together and creating the train set is the biggest part of the fun so make sure you don’t interfere and put it together for them!

Wooden Hobby Horse – again, a bit like a hula hoops, cantering around with a wooden hobby horse between your legs is an essential part of a traditional childhood

Wooden Bead Frames – usually confined to the doctors and dentists surgeries, primarily because the beads cannot get lost. A bead frame a delightful gift, though from experience, I can tell you it is not a gift that children can share well as they argue about who is playing with each bead. Perhaps then, not an ideal gift for twins, triplets or more!

Spring Cleaning the Old Toys
Twice a year, parents get unusually panicky. We’re talking Christmas and Birthday’s here. Why is this a cause for panic? It’s the biannual toy clear out time. Around 2 weeks before Christmas or Birthday’s it’s time to get the charity bags out and fill them with all of the unused toys in order to make way for the new ones. It’s difficult to be ruthless as some toys hold fond places in your heart. Other toys, it’s hard to decide whether your child has really grown out of them.

However, be harsh with yourself. You need to make way for the new toys. If old puzzles are scattered into several toy boxes, then they haven’t been used for a while and you can get rid of them. If the old building blocks haven’t been got out for several months, they can also be moved on to the next owner or stored away safely in the attic.

There are lots of ways you can pass on your toys. If you have friends and relatives with children, you can hand your toys straight on to them. If you’re feeling charitable you can drop them off at your local charity shop. Freecycle websites are a great way of handing on your items to new owners too. Alternatively if you wish to profit from your old toys you can always sell them on to a new owner via sites such as eBay. It’s a good time to round up the broken bits and pieces too and stick them out for the rubbish men.

A birthday should be a time for your child to scream in delight at their new rocking horse or dolls house. It shouldn’t be a day that sends you spiralling into despair. Get your calendar out and circle the date, 2 weeks before the big occasion, to be the deadline for tidying out the old toys and making spaces in the cupboards and toy boxed.

Wooden tools for a sustainable future.
The cheapness and short life span of modern plastic toys is something that amazes the older generation. When a child is born these days, their grandparents found it very hard to come to terms with the range of plastic toys available.

Plastic toys have a large carbon foot print. They are often shipped a long way, are made from non-recyclable material, and are often made using cheap labour. In this modern age when we become much more aware of our carbon footprint and creating a sustainable future for our children, we need to consider the materials that our children’s toys are made from. First look to see if the toy is made from wood – this is an immediate tick in the box. Second, research a little further into the source of the wood. Rubber wood for example is used for some toys and is taken at the end of its lifecycle from replenishable forests.

Wooden toys are usually considerably more durable that plastic toys, which makes them considerably more environmentally friendly – in that one toys will last through several children’s childhoods with maybe just the occasional new paint work. Plastic toys on the other hand fade and get stress bends. When they break, they are usually unmendable, whereas wooden toys can usually be lovingly repaired with a touch of superglue.

If sustainability itself doesn’t win you round though, consider the other advantages. Primarily for a stressed parent, wooden toys are usually silent. If you compare the serenity of a wooden rocking horse to say a plastic, battery powered keyboard or a colourful, (and noisy) plastic trumpet , you can also factor in sustainability of your own sanity!

Clinching the deal though for the wooden toy versus plastic toy debate, is simple nostalgia. People enjoy giving a solid, traditional wooden toy, whether it is a train set or a puzzle.

First Blog on Wooden Toys
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