Why wooden toys are the better choice for your child

    Von Sabrina
NICE TO KNOW

Why wooden toys are the better choice

Different manufacturers use a whole range of different materials to make toys.
We at Eichhorn have made a conscious decision to use wood.

In this article, we explain in detail why wooden toys are an excellent choice and what advantages wooden toys offer your child.

What makes wooden toys so special and why should you buy them?

Before we look at the advantages of wooden toys in detail, we would like to give you a brief overview of the most important reasons for buying wooden products:

  • Sustainability🌱: As a natural, renewable raw material, wood is a sustainable material option
  • Durabilityβ™»: Wooden toys are robust and durable
  • SafetyπŸ”’: Wooden toys are very safe to use (if well made) and are also free from harmful substances
  • Play value and development🧩: Many wooden toys offer enormous play value and support your child in various areas of development
  • Appearance and Haptik🀲🏻: The natural, subtle appearance makes wooden toys timeless classics, while the surface texture invites children to gain valuable tactile experiences

Durability and robustness: wooden toys as a sustainable choice

Why wooden toys are clearly a sustainable choice is actually obvious. Wood is a renewable raw material, straight from nature. It is also extremely robust and can often withstand wild play and minor mishaps, such as being dropped, without any problems. If damage does occur, wooden toys can often be repaired with little effort, for example with sandpaper and wood glue.

In contrast to plastic toys, which break relatively quickly, high-quality wooden toys will last your child a long time. Once your child has outgrown the toy, you can even pass it on to younger siblings or cousins. Not only are you doing something good for the children, but also for the environment! After all, using toys for many years instead of constantly buying new products reduces the ecological footprint.

Health benefits of wooden toys

Your child's health is a valuable asset. It is therefore important to be able to trust that children's toys do not pose any health risks.

Unfortunately, this cannot be assumed with certainty for all products. Some plastic toys contain harmful substances that can harm your child in the long term. This is a particularly serious problem for baby and toddler toys, which not only come into contact with your child's skin, but may also occasionally end up in their mouth.

Are you wondering why wooden toys are clearly preferable from a health point of view? Quite simply, the naturalness of the material makes it completely harmless to health. Cleanly processed, pollutant-free wooden toys, such as those available from Eichhorn, pose no risk whatsoever to your child's health and therefore enable a carefree, safe play experience.

Environmental friendliness and sustainability

In addition to its durability, which reduces the ecological footprint, the sustainability of wooden toys also offers other environmentally friendly benefits. You can simply recycle toys that are no longer needed or dispose of them in an environmentally friendly way, as wood is biodegradable. Eichhorn also guarantees that the wood used comes from sustainably managed forests, with the majority of our products being FSC-certified.

What is the educational value of wooden toys?

In addition to the clear benefits in terms of sustainability, wooden toys also help to teach children about the importance of environmental protection through play. By using wooden toys, you can explain how this material protects the environment and why this is important. Special products further support the development of your child's environmental awareness. The best examples are our  bird and  insect houses. Painting the houses together and observing the animals creates an ideal framework for talking to your child about our ecosystem and the important role that small creatures play in it.

These points illustrate why wooden toys provide your child with optimal educational support:

  • Creativity: wooden toys are often designed in such a way that there is plenty of room for developing creative play scenarios and incorporating your own ideas
  • Motor skills: Many wooden toys appeal to your child's motor skills and help to specifically train gross and fine motor skills
  • Cognition: Different wooden toys present your child with different cognitive challenges that promote concentration, logical thinking, problem-solving skills and imagination, for example
  • Sensory: The natural texture of the wood allows your child to gain exciting sensory experiences and train their senses

Why wooden toys are suitable for children of all ages

A look at the Eichhorn product range provides the answer to the question of why wooden toys are suitable for children of all ages. Because: Our range includes a huge variety of different wooden toys that are perfectly tailored to the needs and abilities of children of different age groups.
Would you like to see for yourself?

No problem! Browse through the baby and toddler toys category and discover numerous wooden products that are ideal thanks to their easy handling and high product safety. A good example of Eichhorn wooden toys that specifically encourage pre-school children are our blackboards. These special role-playing toys allow your child to act out school situations.

In the course of the creative play experience, they can get their first taste of school in a safe environment and prepare themselves emotionally for the upcoming start of school.

Schoolchildren need toys that offer more complex tasks so that they can develop their skills through play. Here we can recommend our outdoor toys. These combine cognitive challenges with lots of motor-promoting exercise in the fresh air.

Timeless classics: The most popular wooden toys from Eichhorn

Now that we have explained in detail why wooden toys offer your child so much added value, we would like to introduce you to some of the most popular wooden toys from Eichhorn.

Our wooden building blocks are very popular with children from toddler age. The colorful building blocks, which we offer in various designs and sets, invite children to build, stack and construct towers, figures and imaginary creations. At the same time, they provide a stimulating activity with shapes and colors and improve your child's spatial perception and motor skills.

Jigsaw puzzles and puzzle games of varying degrees of difficulty are popular with toddlers and preschoolers.
They encourage logical thinking through problem-solving tasks and support pattern recognition and hand-eye coordination.

Role-play toys and doll's houses are very popular due to the social component of role-play. Playing together encourages lively exchanges and promotes empathy and communication skills. Social interaction while playing out creative scenarios in different roles involves plenty of interpersonal interaction, which expands your child's social skills.

Kids who are enthusiastic about vehicles love the Eichhorn wooden train sets. The combinable plug-in elements encourage little train drivers to think up new routes again and again and build them using their motor skills. Once the train gets going, an imaginative game full of adventures just waiting to be experienced begins.

And then, of course, there are our musical toys. Rattles, maracas, flutes, drums, xylophones and more take your child on a journey into the world of tones, sounds and instruments. They can discover their interest in music, improve their sense of rhythm and sharpen their auditory perception.

Sustainable production at Eichhorn: fair and local

In addition to the high quality, appealing designs and high play value of our products, our fair production conditions are a good reason to choose Eichhorn toys. We produce the majority of our wooden toys in Germany and strictly adhere to all applicable safety standards. To ensure consistently high quality, we subject our products to regular testing by independent institutes. This results in toys of the highest quality!

Eichhorn wooden toys also have the advantage that they are sold without long transportation routes thanks to the fact that most of them are manufactured in Germany - another plus point in terms of sustainability and environmental protection. Our commitment to sustainable and environmentally conscious production is also reflected in the FSC certificates and the "With a clear conscience" seal, which we received from Focus and Focus Money in 2014.

Buy once, play for a lifetime: Wooden toys from Eichhorn

Sustainable, durable, robust, safe and stimulating: Eichhorn toys have a number of features that make them a great choice and show why wooden toys are rightly so popular. If you would now like to make your child happy with age-appropriate wooden toys, you should pay a visit to our store. There you can be inspired by our top sellers or find your own personal favorites in our colorful assortment.

FAQ: Your frequently asked questions about wooden toys

These questions about wooden toys come up particularly often:

🌳 Why wood instead of plastic toys? 🌳

Compared to plastic, wood is a more sustainable, robust and durable option.

πŸ”’ Are wooden toys safe for babies? πŸ‘ΆπŸ»

Cleanly manufactured wooden toys are safe for babies to use. Pay attention to the manufacturer's age recommendation to find a wooden toy that is suitable for babies.

🧽 How do you care for wooden toys properly? 🧼

If necessary, you can rub untreated products with suitable oil or wax from time to time. However, extensive care is not necessary for wooden toys.

πŸ’­ Which wooden toys are safe? πŸ’­

Most wooden toys are harmless to health. Nevertheless, you should always take a close look at the products to ensure that they have not been treated with potentially harmful substances. At Eichhorn, we only stock products that pose no risk to your child's health.

πŸ’° Why are wooden toys more expensive than plastic toys? πŸ’°

This is partly due to the high quality of the natural material and the careful workmanship. However, the higher purchase price is offset by the durability of wooden toys.

Authors
Sabrina
Our blog is all about the latest and exciting products from Eichhorn. I also share practical tips & tricks and useful advice with you here.
3 months ago