Eco friendly educational toys that take us to other worlds

"Tom come out from under that table! Why have you pulled the tablecloth down all on one side again?" My mother couldn't understand that the table had become a damp, rocky den filled with my imaginary animal friends; the same bear that roved through my bedtime stories might be sat eating berries with me on the dining room floor or I might be conversing wisely with a yellow eyed wolf about the state of the woods. But however far I had travelled into this imaginary dimension or how many ‘friends' I had with me, they all had to vanish before tea time along with the temporary cave, and I had to return to the ‘real' world. It would have been wonderful to be able to keep this world and return to it again and again but we didn't have the space or the money for permanent play dens back then.

In my childhood play was centred around what was immediately to hand, educational toys hadn't even been thought of at the time. If I was outside, mother nature provided trees to climb straight up to the crows nest of a ship in full sail on a rolling sea; long grasses and bushes were the shady depths where I, and my small gang of adventurers followed the tracks of wild creatures and made up games of daring do. In these games there was much call for dashing through scratchy barriers of bushes and nettles, many whooping jumps from high walls and much gritting of teeth against stings and cuts; safe ways of using our imaginations didn't come easily to hand. These days we put a lot of thought into how our children play; we want them to learn while they have fun and we want to know that their environment is safe for them. Toys can still take a child into another world but often price can limit our choice of what to buy. Also these days many parents are looking for environmentally friendly toys as most of us have an awareness of the cost to the environment of plastic and metal toys that are, lets face it, used for such a relatively short time.

So - safe, educational, eco friendly and affordable - can any toy fulfil all these needs while still stimulating a child's mind? How can we expect our children to dream up other worlds when they come complete in bubble wrapping? What parents and nurseries alike need is Eco friendly educational toys that help children relax with their own invented or real playmates, explore their inner worlds, investigate their own possibilities and learn together in the safe yet seemingly wonderful world of their imaginations.

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