With four children who have been busy strewing our home with toys for 14 years now, we think we are pretty good at knowing what toys work for kids. One type of toy that ours have come back to time and again over the years is our wooden toy food. The opportunities for imaginative play with it are huge – restaurants, home corner play, cooking, picnics, making nurseries for their dolls, shops, cafes… you name it, my lounge has been host to it. Over the years it’s undoubtedly the basket of toys that has spent the most time being mixed in with other toys too. The dolls certainly spend a lot of time eating very well indeed but it works beautifully when turned into stew with wooden maths blocks, added to building blocks to make Faraway Tree style lands, used with plasticine to make cakes that can be cut along side the toy ones or served up as part of our home educating life when we need to do some work on healthy eating and food groups. I’ve even used to to model for still life drawing on occasion.
A year ago our youngest daughter was a very lucky girl indeed when she got a wooden play shop for her birthday. Shop play is brilliant for kids, especially if you take the plunge and add some real money into the game. Nothing teaches quite like doing and endless hours of totting up costs and change, drawing up price tickets and restocking the shelves did wonders for her maths and her writing. It sits next to a matching wooden cooker which gives her loads of opportunity to mix and match games so they involve cooking and food play with money and writing games.
Recently we ran a competition over on our blog to give one lucky winner a picnic full of wooden play food from BigJigs. I adore the BigJigs stuff – not only is it excellent value and good quality but it has real diversity. There are meals, there is healthy food, often made so it can be cut and sliced and there is the all too essential cakes and biscuits too. There are no calories in wooden biscuits so I am quite happy to have those served up to me! Given the competition had over 100 entries, I’m fairly sure I’m not the only one to like these types of products for my children!
I’m really proud of the diverse selection of wooden toy food we have on PlayMerrily and love that we dip into different brands, materials and prices ranges too. I especially love the soft fabric play food from Haba, which really ticks a box from me. It’s incredibly delicately stitched, making it seem like a craft product in many way, with lovely colours and some really novel ideas too.
I know I ought to be liking salad… but you know, these just really appeal!
With the weather set to be wet for sometime, you could probably do worse than planning for some carpet picnics. If you need an incentive, Haba and BigJigs have a full 15% off in May across the entire range. If you’d like to join us for our next giveaway, do follow us on FaceBook and/or Twitter.
(Actually, that isn’t true here, Mario is much loved… but I can dream!)
