Every parent wants the absolute best for their child, and when it comes to incorporating learning with play, there's nothing better than wooden toys. Handmade wooden toys, crafted in the USA, are perfect for teaching children how to use their imaginations while still keeping them interested and eager to play, rather than content to settle in front of the television.

Educational Wooden Toys
Besides the classic alphabet blocks that have been teaching children their letters and how to read and spell for literally hundreds of years, there are plenty of other innovative educational wooden toys to encourage learning and growth.

For developing your child's hand-eye coordination, try manipulative wooden toys such as brightly painted puzzles in varying shapes and sizes. Activity centers, adjustable easels, and magnetic mazes are all wonderful wooden toys for kids for as they help improve dexterity, stimulate growth and learning, while keeping the child amused at the same time.

There are also educational play sets as well as whimsical wooden marionettes and puppets that open up a world of creative possibilities. Wooden sorters of different sizes and stackers in eye-catching colors are sure to keep your youngsters busy for hours on end. Older children and pre-teens will enjoy toys that invoke curiosity and encourage interactions with others.

Wooden building blocks, puzzles, and games such as ring-toss, checkers, tic-tac-toe, or chess all continue to be timeless favorites of children young and old alike. Encouraging the growth of your child's essential cognitive skills, such as problem-solving or decision-making abilities, are yet two more of the important benefits of using educational wooden toys.

Wood Toys for Babies and Toddlers
There are so many fun and educational wood toys designed specifically with both babies and toddlers in mind. Smaller hands need larger, chunkier sized toys that are easy to manipulate such as 3-D wooden puzzles in colorful shapes and designs, vibrantly painted jack-in-the-boxes, or jumbo sized trains and cars. Any toddler would love colorful puzzles to put together in shapes of animals such as dogs, cats, and teddy bears.

Using quality materials, rounded corners and smooth surfaces, wooden toys for young children also include fun items that encourage pretend play with realistic-looking food sets, castle and princess themed toys, as well as the all-time, traditional classics such as push or pull along toys.

Handmade Wooden Toys
Handmade wooden toys are timeless treasures that will continue to amuse and educate children throughout the ages. For centuries, children have played with toys such as building blocks or simple hand-painted alphabet blocks finely crafted from wood. Archeologists have long discovered toys carved from wood in the shapes of dolls, animals, and horse-drawn chariots dating back to the days of the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations.

While you may find that the wooden toys of today have greatly evolved over the last few hundred years, they still remain largely the same in terms of durability, safety, and of course, their unrivaled charm and appeal.

Any child would be thrilled with sets of handmade wooden planes, cars, trucks, and boats, not to mention the different types of construction vehicles that allow for countless hours of creative, stimulating play. And what little girl wouldn't love to have her very own wooden play kitchen, or doll cradle, or wooden doll house?

Many Benefits of Wooden Toys
It's no secret that wood toys are more durable and made to last far longer than the average plastic toy. Wooden toys are also better able to withstand heavy play and many years of use. Over time, some plastics may become weaker and more susceptible to cracking and breaking, possibly leaving sharp edges.

With wooden toys you also won't have to worry about dangerous or harmful chemicals that are often used to make plastics, which is especially important today with more and more toys being recalled due to safety hazards. And since wood is biodegradable, these toys are safe for the environment as well as for your precious child.

So often the electronic toys of today, with their numerous moving parts and endless sounds and bells and whistles tend to break as soon as they're out of the box, or end up needing a constant supply of batteries in order to work properly. Many wooden toys may not be mass produced or commercially made, which actually lends to their charm and appeal.