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Wooden Toys & Games

Wooden toys and games hold a special place in the memory of many people. Look in the window of an antiques shop and you might see the hobby horse, spinning top, or soldier set you had as a child. Crafted with love, these durable toys and games are often worth more than their original sale price.

Wooden toys and games have some advantages over mass-produced plastic toys. Often handcrafted, wooden toys last a long time and stimulate the imagination. Wooden toy soldiers, blocks and games often became treasured gifts.

Types of Wooden Toys and Games
- Imagination in action
  
  Children learn when they play. A wooden ship model or wooden building blocks may presage the career of an architect, scientist, or engineer. If you give a child a padded wooden sword, he becomes Julius Caesar, or King Arthur.
  
  A child fascinated with the simple movements of a spinning top or the endless strategies involved in chess might easily become tomorrow's Hertha Sponer or Albert Einstein.
  
  Simple wooden games and toys, coupled with a child's imagination, can be used to teach many things. A good example of this is learning the alphabet from simple wooden ABC blocks.
Collecting
- Collectible toys
  
  Many people have developed emotional ties to certain toys. You may have a strong emotional reaction upon seeing a spinning top or hobby horse like your childhood favorite. The song of a music box might elicit warm memories from childhood. These emotional ties help to make some wooden toys and games gain value as collectible items. Adults like to revisit their childhood memories when they hold a favored toy.
  
  Antique wooden toys are a type of collectible toy. Handcrafted toys available for collection can be hundreds of years old. The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian houses wooden toys made by Native American tribes as far back as the 1600s.
  
  Colonial settlers handcrafted toys and games for their children out of wood and other local materials. Many of these are prized collectors' items today worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
Crafting
- carving a toy
  
  Take pride and pleasure from crafting wooden toys and games. It is an interesting hobby and the product makes great gifts for children of all ages. There are resources available on line and in the library to help you learn toy making and some community colleges may offer classes in basic wood working which can help you learn to make toys.
  
  Creating wooden toys in your own workshop space can be done with power tools or all traditional hand tools. Pencils, saws, drills and chisels are used to mark and carve wood into toys and game pieces. The work can be as simple or complex as you want.
  
  It is better to start off using simple patterns to shape the toys you like to make. Tops, yo-yos, and rocking horses are fairly easy and inexpensive to make. Toy building blocks and wooden puzzles also make great handcrafted gifts. With experience, you might like to carve chess pieces or checkers and make handcrafted game boards from luxury woods. This could even become a cottage industry for you.

Childrens Toys