If you’re reading this, it’s because you’re worried about the kind of gifts your kids will get. Its quality, durability, attractiveness, use, etc.
Surfing the net or walking around the city we can see how wooden toys timidly return to occupy a small place in shop windows. More and more of us parents are opening our eyes and valuing the quality of toys, more than the quantity or the price.
Let’s compare wooden toys versus plastic toys.
Looking at this photograph, the differences are abysmal and obvious. Imagine that you have the wooden car in your right hand and the plastic car in your left hand. Do you feel the same? Even without being able to touch these two toy cars, we can perceive the difference in terms of weight, colors, touch, noise… This fact already says a lot about the fact that they are two very different types of toys. To know about the different type of toys visit here poppybabyco.
Starting with weight, wooden toys are more robust, heavier, and have more presence. Plastic toys, being lighter, diminish the importance of the game and the toy itself.
Touch is another of the first sensations we perceive when holding a toy. Everyone knows that plastic is a cold material and wood is a warm material. Wooden toys provide a pleasant sensation when touched and send us many more neural stimuli. Each wooden toy will offer a different touch, as the wood has irregularities. Plastic is everything and always the same and hence you can never get the same feel after using the plastic toy that you can get after using a wooden toy.
In architecture, for example, the warmth and warmth of a wooden house is undeniable.
All these sensations that our brain perceives are multiplied exponentially in the brain of children, and hence enhances their experience of playing with the toy by many folds.
Simplicity is another feature of wooden toys. Although there are very sophisticated wooden toys, it is common for them to be simple and unstructured (or little). The child will have the job of pulling the imagination so that the toy is or does what he wants.
Plastic toys are down to the smallest detail, and often incorporate lights and sounds. Children take a passive role as mere observers. The toy makes and the child watches, which actually reduces all the fun and excitement of playing with that toy.
In addition, a poorly defined wooden toy is much more versatile, since at one time it may be a car and at another it may be a spaceship, for example, or a tractor. This thing cannot be achieved by a normal plastic toy.
Wooden toys offer long durability. They are more expensive, but we buy less and of higher quality. Plastic toys tend to be more fragile, break more easily (especially if they are inexpensive) and lead to new replacement toys having to be purchased. And that’s how you get into the wheel of buying, using, and throwing which is surely not a good trait.
Plastic toys, apart from having a certain use, accompany the child only for a short period of time. Children grow up fast and toys remain “small”, infantilized. On the other hand, wooden toys are usually evolutionary and a child with 3 years and another with 6, can play perfectly with the same wooden toy which is another reason why you should go for the wooden toys instead of the boring plastic toys.
With all that, let’s not forget that wood is an environmentally friendly material and plastic is highly polluting. It is one of the major reasons why you should not buy the plastic toys. The environmental hazards caused by these plastic toys are way too much, and somehow they also affect the health of the children, as children have the habit of taking everything in their mouths, and with plastic going in their mouth the risk is always very high. For the safety of the children, and environment, we must avoid and deny using the toys made using plastic.
It is also important to say that not all plastic toys are the same, there are the best and the worst. There are plastic construction toys, for example, that are fantastic for imagination and various skills. And the same thing happens with wooden toys, there are different qualities. So the important thing is to buy with awareness and knowledge, and if you are planning to buy something which would be better than normal plastic toys available in the market, wooden toys can surely be your best pick.