Waldorf Inspired Children's Wooden Toys

The philosophy of using natural fibres, such as wood, cotton and silk to create toys and furniture in Waldorf schools (also known as Steiner schools), comes from the desire to nurture young children's senses, and surround them with beauty.

A typical Waldorf kindergarten class will be furnished with warm wooden furniture and cotton or silk drapes and wool rugs. Toys will be made from natural materials and will include traditional children's wooden toys (such as cups, plates, tables and chairs), woollen "twisties" which the children use for everything from bridles to skipping ropes, and shells, stones, and wooden blocks naturally formed from cut and sanded tree branches.

There are lots of Waldorf supplies available for those who want to set up their own home using Rudolf Steiner's teachings, or who wish to homeschool along Waldorf lines.

Waldorf education teaches that 'unformed' toys are ideal for the young child, so that their imagination is given as much freedom as possible. In other words, while a shaped car is always a car, a simple bowl could be a cup or a boat or a cauldron.

In my experience a car actually can be other things (a baby for example), but nonetheless the toys that are not highly formed do seem to stimulate wider imagination.

In my children's kindergarten classrooms I've seen chairs turned on their sides and used as boats, cars and buses, I've seen the wooden play stands used as walls in a house, as counters in a shop and as shelves in a kitchen, I've seen shells used as money and stones used as trees. Beautiful dyed silks are used as rooves over two play stands, as capes, shawls and blankets. And wooden eggs cups are used as tea cups and jugs.

Imagination Imitating Life

The kindergarten furniture - wooden chairs and tables - at my children's Waldorf school are deliberately designed to be stackable in different ways, to double as building blocks for their various imaginative activities. They also have standard household tools in the classroom, such as wooden brooms, dustpan and brush and (less standard) a hand grinder for grinding grains which they later use in their cooking. The children use all these tools to play in an imitation of daily life, as well as for the real tasks of grinding and sweeping.

"Practical life is part of every day in the Waldorf kindergarten," Nancy Blanning writes in 'The Waldorf Kindergarten and Practical Work', an article in the Fall 2010 edition of LILIPOH Magazine. "We grind flour, knead and bake bread, and chop vegetables for our soup. We stitch and sew, wash and clean, saw and sand wood. There is no intention to be a quaint "Little House on the Prairie." The goal is to let the children experience purposeful activity with a beginning, middle and end, with concrete results that benefits themselves and others."

All these tasks will be blended into a calm and homely routine of "breathing in and breathing out" - coming together as a class and moving out into free play.

And the overriding principle at this age will be to surround the children with a beautiful and nurturing environment, filled with beautiful, natural materials and a calm adult presence.

If you want to shop for children's wooden toys in person, and you have an Oxfam shop nearby, you can't go wrong there. They have many lovely wooden toys created in Fair Trade conditions around the world.