Making toys for 4 year olds

[TheTiddles]

My daughter told me when she was nine that she remembered her great grandmother giving her Freddos. There is no way she could have been told this by anyone else - she was twenty one months old when her g. g. mother died.

Yes, I can remember quite a few things from under 18-months and some I think are before. However, often where I parked my car each morning, somewhat harder

Aidan

 

[thomashenry]

Don't want to sound negative.... but do 4 year old kids really want hand made wooden toys? When I was a kid in the 80s I would have turned my nose up at things like that, I wanted things my friends had, things I'd seen on the TV, things based on cartoons etc. Are you making the toys for your own pleasure or theirs?

 

[TheTiddles]

Yes. 4 may be pushing it

 

[Max Power]

I can’t help but think this isn’t right, or am
I an anomaly?

Aidan

No Aidan, I can also remember some early events

 

[Nigel Burden]

Don't want to sound negative.... but do 4 year old kids really want hand made wooden toys? When I was a kid in the 80s I would have turned my nose up at things like that, I wanted things my friends had, things I'd seen on the TV, things based on cartoons etc. Are you making the toys for your own pleasure or theirs?

When my children were 4/5 years old in the 1980s they would play with hand made wooden toys. One that they used to like was one I remember from my childhood in the 1950s, a wooden cotton reel with notches cut around the rim., A.n elastic band was threaded through the centre with a snapped off matchstick that was shorter than the diameter of the reel passed through one end of the band, and a longer piece, about 1 1/2 to 2 times the reels diameter through the other end. This was wound up until there was sufficient tension. It would then climb over rough ground, flip itself over and continue on it's way. A very simple toy that took minutes to make.

I remember my father making me a wooden wheelbarrow. I had lots of enjoyment out of that, wheeling the dog around the garden, moving soil around etc.

Nigel.

 

[akirk]

Don't want to sound negative.... but do 4 year old kids really want hand made wooden toys? When I was a kid in the 80s I would have turned my nose up at things like that, I wanted things my friends had, things I'd seen on the TV, things based on cartoons etc. Are you making the toys for your own pleasure or theirs?

when my 6 year old nephew was over earlier in the summer, he was very happy playing with mdf offcuts - making buildings for the lego vehicles he was constructing, children of that age love imaginative play, some wooden toys will be very popular, others needing little imagination may not be so popular

 

[Phil Pascoe]

When my children were 4/5 years old in the 1980s they would play with hand made wooden toys. One that they used to like was one I remember from my childhood in the 1950s, a wooden cotton reel with notches cut around the rim., A.n elastic band was threaded through the centre with a snapped off matchstick that was shorter than the diameter of the reel passed through one end of the band, and a longer piece, about 1 1/2 to 2 times the reels diameter through the other end. This was wound up until there was sufficient tension. It would then climb over rough ground, flip itself over and continue on it's way. A very simple toy that took minutes to make.

I remember my father making me a wooden wheelbarrow. I had lots of enjoyment out of that, wheeling the dog around the garden, moving soil around etc.

Nigel.

Cotton reel tractors - everyone had them. Four or five panel pins knocked into the end of a cotton reel for French knitting was another.

 

[Roseland 2]

A Pikler triangle for my great nieces.

Andrew

 

[Nigel Burden]

when my 6 year old nephew was over earlier in the summer, he was very happy playing with mdf offcuts - making buildings for the lego vehicles he was constructing, children of that age love imaginative play, some wooden toys will be very popular, others needing little imagination may not be so popular

I remember watching a documentary a few years ago set in Africa, and a boy had made a car out of chicken wire with revolving wheels. He obviously had a good imagination, which I would imagine that a lot of the children in African villages did at the time.

Nigel.

 

[Roseland 2]

A Pikler Triangle climbing frame: