The Child Play Equipment

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 162, 5 April 1938, Page 5

The Child Play Equipment

Toys For The Child Need Serious Selection r I''HERE are two kinds of toys—those X that the child can do something with and those that he can only watch. Children enjoy for years their sandboxes, blocks, balls, tools, wagons, dolls, dolls’ furniture, and the many other toys out of which they can make something with which they can do something new; but they soon tire of the toys that 1 they only watch—the ordinary mechanical toys. Certain mechanical toys are of interest to a child — such as a car that he can wind up and steer. Many a child takes more pleasure in a dozen clothes-pins and a few pieces of cloth to wrap round them than in an elaborate ready-made doll whose clothes will not come off. The little child is interested in making, in building, in doing—not in looking on. Encourage him in this, for if be does not develop this interest early in life, he may grow into the kind of persdn who Is always a looker-on and not a doer.

Blocks should be part of the equipment of every playroom. Plain blocks, coloured blocks, large and small ones—all blocks are worthwhile toys. Balls, also, are very satisfactory toys for young children. Very large balls to be rqjled on the floor, smaller balls to throw, rubber balls to bounce, coloured balls, balloons on a string—all are good. Always provide large sheets of paper for drawing. The paper may be unprinted newspaper (newsprint), purchased at the newspaper office, or lightcoloured wrapping paper or samples of wallpaper. Crayons, a blackboard and coloured chalk, clay or moist sand for modelling, bright-coloured pieces of paper in different shapes that can be used for folding, cutting, or pasting, large coloured beads to string—all are toys in which the three to five-year-old child will take much interest if he is allowed to use them himself. Toys that can be pulled by a string such as a horse and "wagon, or a truck, are of special interest to the two-to-four-year-old child, if they are large enough to be loaded with blocks or sand and unloaded again. Dolls, of course, are an important part of playroom equipment for young children, Dolls made of heavy rubber are durable and washable. Soft rags, or dolls made of soft cloth and painted so that they will 'wash, are also good. Soft woolly animals and other toy animals; housekeeping toys, of all sorts —small tables, chairs, dolls’ beds dishes; kitchen stoves and pots—gardening and carpentry toys that are really, useful and durable, are needed. Pieces of cloth or yarn, empty spools and boxes, wrapping paper and bags, coloured cord, old clothing to dress up in, and discarded magazines ate all valuable material for a child to play with. Such kitchen utensils as egg beaters and pans that fit into one another, are often absorbing toys to a young child. (Kitchen utensils that are sharp or in any other way dangerous should not be given to children.) Shelves of the right height for the little child are better than boxes for toys, for the child can keep the toys in better order on shelves. Toys that are kept in a box are more apt to be broken. Avoid toys that are easily broken. Through them the child learns careless and extravagant ways. Toys should encourage constructive, not destructive, habits.

—By courtesy “Home Play,” Children’s Bureau, U.S. Department of Labour; supplied by the Department of Health.