Life and News Blog

Are wooden toys going to disappear from the toy shelves soon? Are wooden building blocks and wooden trucks soon to become something you can only find in an antique shop or your grandmother’s attic? It happened to Erector Sets, one of the foremost classic toys you could ever hope to find. Many individuals who are engineers today developed that interest after they got their first Erector Set. But they’re gone now, victims of the electronic revolution that appears to be sweeping the toy department. If it doesn’t walk by itself, talk by itself and allow you to chat with someone on the other side of the globe it’s outta here. Will wooden toys suffer the same fate?

Classic wooden toys that operate on imagination alone are being discarded in favor of electronic and interactive toys as kids become technologically savvy at a younger and younger age. However specialists are beginning to see that, while these electronic toys are more enticing to kids, much of the technology that is added to the toys is really altering the basic ways in which the children play. These new toys are literally limiting your child’s creativity and imagination processes. Kids now expect the toys to entertain them when they used to expect to entertain themselves with the toys.

Mitchel Resnick, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, says, “Technology can be used in many ways. Sometimes it can support new learning experiences and sometimes it can suppress them.” Yet toy makers argue that in order to satisfy consumer demands and keep up with technological changes they need to continue adding more and more electronics to their toys.
Some experts say that kids are becoming so familiar with electronics in their toys that they now just push a button and expect the toy to perform. Toys like talking dolls each have their own pre-programmed personality and can stop kids from developing their language skills their creativity and imagination. When kids play with these talking toys all they are doing is repeating back what the toy says to them. They’re not using their imagination to create a dialogue because they are expecting the doll to tell them what to say next.

In essence, we are not teaching our children how to play games anymore, we’re merely entertaining them to keep them quiet. But in the process we’re stifling imagination and creativity. Kids are being given electronic toys at such an early age that when they get to elementary school they don’t even understand what Play-doh is because they’ve never seen it. It does not speak, it doesn’t walk and it does not show movies.

Experts recommend that we get our children back to the basics so they develop the creative skills they’ll need later in life. Electronic toys are fine within reason. However if your child doesn’t develop the fundamental cognitive skills he needs before he starts playing with these electronic toys, then he could be in serious trouble when he enters school. Classic wooden toys like building blocks and wooden cars and trucks and wooden pull and push toys help your child develop his imagination and creativity in a way that no electronic toy ever will.

Want to find out more about wood toys, then visit Noah Meckler’s site on how to choose the best educational wooden toys for your needs.