Baufix Crane Construction Kit. Photo courtesy of ChildTrek.

I’ve found that ChildTrek is one of the best places to look for a wide selection of eco-friendly, educational toys and parenting advice on child development.

The ChildTrek has just won second place in the King 5 Best of Western Washington 2011 contest for Best Children’s Gift. The event is sponsored by King5 News in Seattle.

The retail company makes sure that all of the toys and items it sells meet several safety standards, including:

• Documentation of high safety and quality controls from product designs, material acquisitions, product development, and delivery.
• Compliance with the new Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act laws (CPSI) and the European Standards (EN 17).
• Excellent product safety history.

When deciding which toys to carry, ChildTrek also evaluates them against its “wholesome, natural, and educational vision.”

miYim Organics – Tigger. Photo from ChildTrek.

ChildTrek considers wholesome toys to be toys that facilitate the development of social skills, such as sharing, taking turns, and negotiating problems.

As for the naturalness of its toys, the company says, “The vast majority of the toys you’ll find at ChildTrek are made of natural, biodegradable, recyclable, and/or recycled materials. They are made of sustainable wood and/or natural fabrics such as wool and cotton. A few are made of cotton and polyester blends and very little new plastic is used.

“Most of the toys are finished with vegetable or other natural dyes, polished with beeswax, and painted with non-toxic paints, or retain their natural, unfinished beauty.”

Father built this sandbox and now plays with his son in it. Photo courtesy of Dover Projects.

If they don’t already have one, a great idea is to build your kids a sandbox to give them that ‘at the beach experience’ during the week. Kids love it. They use their construction toys and buckets to make things like castles with moats, towers, animal shapes, and other sand creations.

While you can find good quality wooden sandboxes at stores, with a little know-how and an ability to follow directions, you can build a much better sandbox at a lower cost.

In other words, a small store-bought sandbox will likely cost you more than a bigger sandbox that you can build yourself. You can make anything from a very basic sandbox to an elaborate one with a warp-around seat.

Today, we’re going to take a look at some of the best and most unique ideas from some parents who have built sandboxes for their own kids (with their websites includes, so you can get the step-by-step details from them).

Photo by BulletproofBlog.

Cadmium is a cheap heavy metal used for a number of purposes including as part of creating paint colors applied to children’s toys and play jewelry.

The dangerous health effects from acute and chronic exposure to cadmium in both people and animals have been documented by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

These findings seem of little consequence to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), which is suggesting that manufacturers be allowed to increase the allowable levels cadmium in children’s toys and play jewelry.

The labor department finds that a one-time exposure to a large amount of cadmium can result in flu-like symptoms such as weakness, fever, headaches, chills, sweating and muscular pain. Acute pulmonary edema usually develops within 24 hours and reaches a maximum by three days.

With luck and a good immune system, if death from asphyxia doesn’t occur, symptoms may resolve within a week, according to the labor department.

Alphabet A-Z. Photo courtesy of PlanToys.

During preschool children will be expected to master a number of areas, according to prekinders.com, including literacy, which will involve learning the letters of the alphabet and their sounds; building listening skills; learning new vocabulary; sequencing items and events; and developing motor skills.

In math, some of the core skills that children will need to master, include: learning the numbers from one to 10; counting objects up to 10; sorting by shapes, colors, and sizes; being able to compare sizes; and noticing patterns.

Learning can be easy and fun for children if it’s done as part of play. The hardest part for parents and educators may be finding toys that meet children’s educational needs, which are also fun and safe for both them and the environment.

There are lots of benefits to buying toys that meet national and international eco-friendly requirements. To meet children’s health and safety needs, standards include using chemical-free woods, non-toxic paints, and safety-conscious ergonomic shapes.

KidsCraft Cottage - Photo by toydirectory.com.

Most of us can think back to a childhood where our favorite toy was our imagination - playing house, acting out scenes from our favorite stories, and making up our own adventures. Little kids, then and now, are naturally creative and love to explore.

The founders of KidsCraft Playhouse were reminded of this about a year ago when they were still in the financial services industry and decided to change office spaces. They took their children and grandchildren along during their weekend moving efforts, and noticed that the kids were much more interested in playing with the big moving boxes than the toys and coloring books that were brought along.

“They never touched the toys we brought. It was the major moving boxes. It was, ‘Dad could you cut a hole in this for a door. Can you tape this together. Can we color this.’ It took us a few weeks, and then a light bulb went off. We said, ‘We could do this,’ and that’s how this began,” said Paul Isbell, vice president and co-founder of KidsCraft Playhouse.

Image courtesy of Lindenwood Inc.

“It’s an interesting thing to have presidents on a set of blocks and we are always trying to come up with unique ideas. Some people really key into our political history, even myself going through the process and getting into things that I had never really learned about the presidents,” said Pete Bultman, the company’s owner.

“Usually these guys are up on pictures in a classroom, and I remember when I was a kid looking up and thinking who are these guys. When young minds are active and engaged, it’s amazing what they pick up on and the potential in using presidential blocks. They might spark an interest that a kid might pursue down the line,” added Mr. Bultman.

In many cultures around the world, a hug is a sign of affection. This was the sentiment behind the name Hugg-A-Planet for the soft globes produced by the company with the same name, whose spheres are now orbiting the Earth.

On this year’s anniversary of the brutal destruction of the Twin Towers, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched a resupply rocket to the International Space Station, which included among its contents a Hugg-A-Planet Earth, Moon, and Mars.

“I was actually in New York City for a vigil for peace that was run by the United Nations in Central Park during the same weekend that the Hugg-A-Planets docked at the space station,” said Robert Forenza, the company’s president.

“We were selected by NASA because our Hugg-A-Planets would survive the flight and because they have so much detail. Mars has 400 places labeled on it, which makes it the most detailed Mars commercially available,” continued Mr. Forenza, also adding that, “All of the planets will be there for the duration of the space station’s life until 2016, but I imagine they will extend it to 2020.”

• Little Tikes Workshops and Trucks
• Jump ‘n Jive Doorway Jumpers

Photo courtesy of the CPSC.

Product recall isn’t a completely accurate description because none of the products are being taken back in their entirety by the manufacturers. In all cases, only components of the products will be replaced by consumer request.

The hazard point for the Little Tikes products are the oversized plastic toy nails. The manufacturer, Little Tikes Co., reported one incident where an 11-month old boy from Goose Creek, S.C., choked when a toy nail became lodged in his throat. The child was hospitalized, but made a full recovery, according to the company.

Photo courtesy of CitiBlocs.

Sometimes the greatest inspirations comes just by watching kids play. This was Marjorie Chayette’s flash of insight a little while back, when watching one of her young sons playing with blocks at a birthday one day.

“They were playing with the blocks at a birthday party and I was fascinated to see what they did with them. They did a lot of group things with the blocks, and I liked how they used their imaginations,” said Ms. Chayette, who used this inspiration to go on to create CitiBlocs, a company producing sets of uniform length natural wooden construction plank blocks, with measurements of 4.5 x .75 x .25 inches.

Ms. Chayette, the owner and principal of CitiBlocs, said, “What I really like about the size is that it just really grows with the kids and they can make more versatile, complicated, and taller structures as they get older. It’s not like a square unit block that they can outgrow.”

EL DORADO, Calif.- ImagAbility, a developer and distributor of developmental toys and educational resources, will be launching a new line of products geared specifically for ages one to three. The new products called Weebabus will be stacking and rolling toys designed to help toddlers develop their vertical and horizontal cognitive and motor skills.

The Weebabu product lines will be introduced to the public at the American Specialty Toy Retailers Marketplace this June 14 through June 18 in Minneapolis.

“The forms and functions of the Weebabu products are similar to our WEDGiTS (stacking and building toys, designed for ages three and up), just the materials are different. Our standard WEDGiTS lines of products are made of hard plastic using high impact polystyrene. The Weebabu lines that we are talking about are made of a natural rubber and covered in a non-toxic nylon flocking,” said Rock McKinley, vice president of sales and marketing at ImagAbility.