Reply to please explain the "no plastic toys/no batteries" school of thought

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Reply to "please explain the "no plastic toys/no batteries" school of thought"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We prefer wooden toys partly for aesthetic reasons. They are not so garish! Seems right for kids to have early tactile experiences with more natural materials, like wood, wool, and cotton. There are environmental reasons to choose toys make from sustainable materials, instead of petro chemicals. And surrounding your baby and young child with tried and true traditional things (like wooden blocks) is probably safer in terms of chemical exposure than giving them lots of plastic to chew on. But my kids do have plenty of plastic toys.

The battery issue is that lots of parents and early childhood educators feel that kids learn best when they have to use their imaginations and creativity.

Magda Gerber (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magda_Gerber) says:

Passive toys encourage active kids
Active toys (like battery powered ones) encourage passive kids[/quote]

This is our opinion, too.  DS does have plastic toys, but we typically don't buy them for him.  We rely on trusted brands to ease our concerns about contaminants or toxins, and steer toward open-ended toys (Duplos, Legos, Little People).

Regarding battery-containing toys, usually the noise and repetition aggravates me.  We usually don't put the batteries in and just let DS play with the toy as is; sometimes it has staying power (in the case of the Little People airplane) and sometimes it doesn't (in the case of a popper toy we were given by my cousin).[/quote]

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