Green Tech Toys for the Knee-High Crowd: Energy Products Articles: Eco20/20

Green Tech Toys for the Knee-High Crowd

Kids understand a toy broken on impact with the floor, but the toy's impact on the environment? That's our job - along with ensuring everything is as right for our kids as we can make it, and teaching them to make things right when they can, so they'll develop the habit of it as they grow. That includes doing right by the environment. So, to help parents help their kids learn that good environmental stewardship doesn't mean sacrificing creativity or fun, here's a pot-luck of eco-friendly toys to whet young imaginations. Bear in mind, some are intended for children who are long done with putting things in their mouths.

Toys that Raise Environmental Awareness

* Remarkable enough to deserve first place, but definitely intended for bigger kids, are the unique eco-friendly build-it kits to be found on Museumtour.com. Their working hydrogen fuel-cell model car, levitation kit, and the model wind turbine that can actually recharge a real rechargeable AA battery were especially eye-catching. They also have some innovative toddler toys, including a wooden 'bike' without pedals that can teach a child how to balance a bike long before they actually learn to ride a bike.

* The Future Planet Space Station, available from Playmobil, has a fan powered by a functioning solar cell, and the toy is designed to get kids to use their imagination about how energy will be created in the future.

Toys that Use Alternative Power:

* Ecotronic makes a wind up flashlight; and a wind up FM Radio that gives kids 5 minutes of listening for one minute of winding.

* There are massed fleets of solar powered cars to be found; and dozens of solar boats, planes, bugs, robots, and frogs. There's even a solar pet rock. (It's plastic, so maybe someone never really grasped the concept of 'rock', but it dances on solar power and watching it buzz across a tile floor can keep a toddler entertained through the waiting room portion of a pediatric visit.)

Toys Made of Sustainable, Natural, Materials:

* Wild Toys, a company that makes animal figures for zoos and museums, has a line of purely organic plush animals that are stuffed with cotton that was grown with organic fertilizer.

* There's been a resurgence of wooden toys; ranging from the forever traditional sets of blocks, and play houses complete with wooden furniture, to the not so traditional pizza service set with wooden platter, pizza cutter, and a fat wooden serving knife to lift the slices.

* There's learning for the head, but there's also learning with the hands, and hand's-on seems the best way to learn common sense, so take some time to introduce your kids to a skill now and then. Kids can learn to make bath fizzes from kits containing bottles of essential oils and other natural ingredients. Or they could be encouraged to assemble their own cookie-making set with wooden bowl, rolling pin, cookie turner and mixing spoon, and then learn to use it all.

Be sure to give some thought, as well, to toys that promote musical aptitudes, like caxixi rattles woven from river grass, wooden flutes, cactus rain sticks, or clay ocarinas.