Review: Wooden Toys fromn Wooden Toy Shop

There's some excitement in our house: When we got home from our exciting trip to the Northfrisian island of Föhr, a parcel with a selection of wooden toys for the Wooden Toy Shop arrived. Cubling dug right into it and hasn't stopped playing with them since.

I'm quite partial to wooden toys and natural materials in general. It's one of those cultural remnants of being German - I'm not sure why but wooden and traditional toys are big in Germany. It might be the level of toxins or child labour that come with many plastic toys, the country of origin and potential lack of regulations to make these toys safe, or it may just be an aesthetic appeal or Germany's obsession with wood and forests, whichever, German households tend to go for wood rather than plastic. I had similar plans, but life took over and I'm pragmatic more often than not.

So I was delighted when given the opportunity to test some wooden toys. We opted for a selection of smaller toys because they offered something different from what we already had. Cubling was most impressed with the Melissa and Doug Magnetic Chalkboard (with white and black board) and the sets of magnetic letters and numbers to go with it. So much so that for the past two days she hasn't stopped drawing on the white board. The fact that she can draw and erase easily has sparked her imagination. And then she also dropped it on her toe... ouch.


She's also fascinated with the Big Jigs Weaving Loom - a toy that is marked as suitable from 5 years, and sure enough, while she's keen to do weaving, she needs a bit of help with it, so I end up weaving for her, which is just fine of course. It won't be long until she'll have figured it out though, she's not far off.

Her first discovery was the Plan Toy Stacking Tree, which is suitable from 2 years. It's a beautiful design and positively the nicest stacking toy I've seen so far. Very eye-pleasing, and very clever in its construction, as the branches position themselves nicely when stacked. It combines size awareness with colour awareness, and is already popular with Snowflake as a teething toy ;) - and Cubling had great fun doing it in reverse.

Each of the toys received have already had more playtime (freely chosen by Cubling, I didn't even suggest she try them out) than most toys usually get in their first week, so it's a definite thumbs up. The range of wooden toys at the Wooden Toy Shop is excellent, with great search criteria making it easy to navigate through the catalogue.