Best Years Launching New Organic Cotton Knit Toys Featuring Baby Buddies and Marine Life

With the Easter season upon us, it’s a great excuse to buy your favorite little ones a cute cuddly stuffed toy that they will have for years to come.

Baby Buddy. Photo by Best Years.

If you’re looking for something really special that’s organic cotton and handmade, I just came upon Best Years, which is a toy maker that specializes in handmade organic knitted and crochet toys with the requirement that employees work under fair trade practices.

Best Years – which just showcased at the American International Toy Fair – launching over a dozen new toys this month, featuring new baby buddy toys, scrappy cats and dogs, and more exotic animal toys, including a seahorse, octopus, starfish, and humpback whale. These toys all come from the Under the Nile Organic collection.

Best Years also has two adorable Pebble Fair Trade Cotton Crochet Doll Bunnies – a girl and boy version – that are perfect for Easter. They’re handmade dolls with embroidered faces. The girl version is white with green feet and has a cute blue patterned dress. The boy version is also white, with brown sock pattern feet, and a cute red tee shirt with a white star and blue shorts. They are all machine washable, with a height of about 20 in. and a width of about 4 in.

Bunny. Photo by Best Years.

Best Years explains that the Pebble Toys (while not specified as organic) have the great quality of being “made in Bangladesh by a workers co-operative which provides fairly paid employment to women in rural locations. This means they do not have to move into Dhaka, where the standards of living are awful.”

Best Years also talks about the actual production process, saying, “To make Pebble Toys, we first start with cotton yarns in a variety of gorgeous colors. Before the toys can be crocheted, yarns are separated out by the ladies. Then the toys are to crochet,” adding that these centers of production are located throughout Bangladesh.

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Seeking Out The Perfect Stuffed Toy For Baby Made From Organic and Natural Materials

Everyone wants the best, safest, and healthiest things for their babies, especially things they’re gonna use a lot, and put in their mouths – namely toys.

HABA Guardian Angels. Photo from HABA.

When it’s a baby you love, a really great gift idea is a cuddly stuffed toy made from natural and organic materials.

Cute stuffed toys made of natural and organic materials are hard to find in most retail stores and even specialty stores, but there are a lot of reputable online places with well-known brands where you can find a lot of high quality collections.

Three of the most notable makers include: HABA, Dandelion Earth-Friendly Goods, and Greenpoint Brands, creator of popular collections like Miyim.

HABA

There are a lot of great things I like about HABA. They have a really big collection of natural and organic-made stuffed toys, including boy and girl guardian angels, and animals like sheep, a frog, and puppies.

HABA Musical Pudgie Puppy Pure Natural – Organic Soft Toy.

HABA also has a great color variety, including shades of white, pink, blue, and green, which allows parents to pick traditional gender colors.

One of my favorite things from HABA is the Musical Pudgie Puppy Pure Natural – Organic Soft Toy. The washable puppy has an organic cotton exterior with polyester filling and a waterproof music box. When you pull the puppy’s shamrock tail, it plays “Rock A Bye Baby.”

The puppy is ideal for newborns to 12-month olds, and stands eight inches tall. Similar to the materials and dimensions of this puppy, HABA also has a Musical Benji Bunny Pure Nature – Organic Soft Toy also ideal for newborns to 12-month olds.

Both toys are made in HABA’s wholly owned facility in China, which the company says is visited regularly and held to the “highest quality standards and work conditions.”

All of the fabrics in the Pure Nature series are manufactured according to Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS).

Also in terms of safety standards, HABA toys meet the European DIN EN ISO 9001 safety certification and the United States ASTM safety certification.

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Fun and Educational Eco-Toy Ideas That Kids In Kindergarten and Younger Will Love This Season

Skip Hop Hug and Hide Activity Bear.

If you are still doing your holiday shopping, looking for things that your kids will love to play with, learn without realizing it, and still be safe for them and the environment, then I have some great ideas for you!

I came across a really great eco-online toy outlet called Peapods Natural Toys and Baby Care, that’s a one-stop-shop some of the best and most popular eco-toy brands, including: Skip Hop, Green Toys, BEKA, and Uncle Goose.

Skip Hop

Skip Hop Hug and Hide Activity Owl.

Skip Hop has a particular stuffed toy called the Hug and Hide Activity Owl (there is also a bear version available) which I really like that’s featured on the site. The owl arms open and reveal a mirror and a baby owl inside.

The toy also has other developmental activities including rattles and squeakers. The dimensions of the toy are: 8 inches high, 7 inches wide, and 4 inches deep. The toy – made in China – is ideal for babies that are three months old and up.

Peapods specifies that the toy meets safety standards that include the following: ASTM, CPSIA, and EN71.

Green Toys

Green Toys – also previously featured on GreenVitals – has a lot of toys on Peapods worth mentioning. Everything from Green Toys is made in America, and packaged using recycled and recyclable materials and printed with soy inks.

Green Toys Submarine From Recycled Milk Bottles.

Among the noteworthy toys from Green Toys is the Submarine From Recycled Milk Bottles, which features a spinning rear propeller, a flat bottom that adds stability for floating, a big handle, and a wide mouth opening that’s great for scooping and pouring water. The dimensions of the submarine are: 10.5 inches long, 5.5 inches wide, and 4 inches high.

In addition, some great news for parents is that the submarine’s cabin can be opened for easy cleaning, and the whole toy is dishwasher safe. The toy also meets safety standards in that it has no BPA, phthalates, PVC, external coatings, and also meets FDA food contact standards.

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Little Green Books’ Online Site Helping Kids Save Earth With Free Webgames, Prints & Great Books

Little kids naturally love the environment. They love to go outside and do things like ride their bikes, go to the playground, or anything else that involves getting some fresh air.

Their love of spending time outdoors is also a great way to teach them to love taking care of the environment.

For the little ones – just starting pre-school and up to a few years older – this is a great time to introduce them to entertaining children’s books and play activities about preserving the environment.

I came across a great site from Simon and Schuster called Little Green Books that has wonderful resources for teaching young children – in very easy to understand ways – about things like:

• Recycling and repurposing stuff around the house.
• Gardening and learning how things grow.
• Endangered species and their habitats.
• Global warming in kid-friendly ways.

The site has a lot of fun features. Among them are three free interactive games that teach about recycling, endangered animals, and gardening.

The first game is called Recycle Away!, and this is how you play:

• There are three recycling bins with the labels – cans and bottles, plastic and glass, and paper and cardboard.
• The player has to use the mouse to put five items into their proper bins – they are: a newspaper, a cardboard box, a glass bottle, a plastic bottle, and a can. When the player does it correctly, they win!

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Creative Sand Sculpting Ideas For Families Looking To Spend Quality Time At The Beach

There is still a solid month’s worth of weekends for the beach and even more than that if you have vacation days, so there’s still plenty of opportunity to spend quality time together with the kids making great memories that can last a lifetime.

Renaissance sand castle. Photo courtesy of Sand Masters.

A great way to spend some time together at the beach is building sand sculptures. Parents can help kids build some really cool things like castles, fancy starfish, butterflies, flowers, turtles, or anything else they can imagine.

Right now on television, there are cool shows like Sand Masters making amazing things like menageries of animal displays, 10 ft. tall grand castles, and other displays. I’m not talking about making any thing that extravagant, but with some basic knowledge, you can make some really cool creations and the kids can help.

Sand Masters and other sites on the web have some really easy to understand tips for making your creations. All you need are some basic tools and knowledge and you are all set. Sand Masters has some great advice for tools that can be modified from want you have at home.

For your top 10 basic tools and demonstrating how to use them by making a dolphin, Sand Masters recommends:

1. Bottomless buckets.
2. Shovels.
3. Square trowels (or anything with a straight side.)
4. Pool trowels (or anything with a straight side.)
5. Palette knives (or any other knives you have at home.)
6. Butter knives.
7. Popsicle sticks (optional).
8. Spoons.
9. Paint brushes (for brushing off extra sand and giving a polished finish.)
10. Straws (for blowing and creating finer details.)

Sand Masters also has a great tutorial about how to ‘Build A Sand Fort.”

There are also a lot of other places on the web that have similar great information that you can print out and take with you to the beach. A great site is Sand Fu that has an introductory section, which includes information about what’s the best kind of sand to use when building your masterpieces.

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