Meet Kate, Anna and Lulu!

 Aren’t they gorgeous???

Oh and I musn’t forget the sweetest boys, Shawn and Charlie .  . .

These dolls are lovingly handmade using 100% wool and cotton by hearing impaired women in Peru as part of a Fair Trade cooperative that fosters self-esteem, personal growth and an opportunity to gain economic independence. 

It is a great reward to observe our children nurturing their dolls, much in the same way that we nurture them. Each doll is crafted with simple embodied facial features that allow a child to imagine their doll in many different moods and situations.

Our aim is to educate parents about the benefits of natural and sustainable toys and give them the opportunity to see and feel our lovely toys.

We have been very busy preparing and organising for the event and have some fantastic offers and give-aways on the day.

One lucky winner will walk away with this gorgeous organic baby hamper valued at $240! 

The hamper includes a Rainstick Tower, Organic Cozy Lime Doll, Cherry Wood Toddler Zoom, Pintoy Twist Rattle, Peter Rabbit Organic Cotton Book, Organic Green Bean, Hexi Twist, Honey Sticks Beeswax Crayons, Stylish Organic Cotton Kimono Outfit (pic below) and a Luxurious MiniLaLa Dandelion Fields Designer Cloth Nappy, courtesy  of Alipants. 

Plus if you visit the Essential Baby Cafe you can enter to WIN one of our stunning new Baby Gyms and a Wooden  Highchair!!

We will be also offering 15% off our Wooden Highchairs and will have a unique range of handmade soft toys & bird mobiles, made using reclaimed woollen jumpers. All these soft toys are one of a kind and are simply gorgeous! Thanks Renee for all your hard work over the past few weeks.

I want to also thank MoederKip for designing and making us a beautiful baby bunting for our stand (which they sell on their store) and for Natural Family Photography for the amazing photos they have taken of children playing with our eco toys.

Eco Toys is giving away complimentry passes to the Baby Show. To receive your free pass simply sign up to our e-newsletter or join our facebook fan page and post on our wall “I would love to come to the baby Show”.

I look forward to seeing you there and doing what I love the most; sharing my passion to make this world a better place for our children and our planet!

A cave for a bear.

A house for a small toy person; a tunnel for cars; or a cradle for a baby. The possibilities are endless when you allow a child time to play and explore.

Children of all ages love to build and to nest toys and this set of wooden rainbow nesting blocks allows them to do both. The blocks, which are a combination of different sizes and colours, come in four shapes, including a number of sequentially sized blocks, to nest, stack and build with.

My daughter can spend hours lining up, stacking and nesting things, which means these blocks are great for lengthening her concentration. At the same time, she’s also learning about sequencing and sorting.

The blocks, with their beautiful bright colours, are also perfect for playing colour and shape recognition games with kids from a young age.

It’s not just younger children that enjoy these blocks; they’re great for kids from two right up to eight or even nine years of age.

School-aged children will use the blocks to make constructions that get more and more complex each day, and these nesting blocks lend themselves wonderfully to creative and imaginative play.

Informal block play is the perfect way to learn a host of early maths skills such as classification, measurement, sequence, pattern, counting, balance, and problem solving.

Given a fabulous toy like this and lots of time and space, children will do what they do best: play and learn.

Article written by Kate - (Early Childhood Educator) and Melinda (Founder  of Eco Toys)

To read what other parents are saying about our Nesting Blocks please visit:                                                                                                                                                                                Our Worldwide Classroom Blog

 

Come  for a drive to the beautiful town of  Woodend this Saturday and see us!

members free, single $5, Family $8 

• sustainable house & garden tours  
• WISE power information
• solar hot water systems
• alternative energy - solar, wind & PV’s
• free energy audits
• bicycle maintenance workshop
• community permaculture garden tour
• fruit tree care demonstrations
• organic / slow food stalls
• organic food exchange
• massage, meditation & yoga workshops
• family entertainment & bbq with local produce

This Festival event in the Macedon Ranges is part of the Local Events Program for the 2010 Sustainable Living Festival. The Main Event at Federation Square in 2009 attracted over 124,000 visits. The 2010 Main Event at Federation Square (19-21 February 2010) promises to be just as inspiring. Visit www.festival.slf.org.au for details.

We have a huge range of beautifully crafted Australian made toys and we are the first online toy store in Australian to provide fun, eco friendly and Australian made toys!

Why purchase Australian made?

When you purchase products that are made in Australia, you are providing jobs to Australians but most importantly you are reducing carbon emissions caused by air pollution.

So where are out toys made?

Locally! Our gorgeous wool felt fruit, veggie and tea sets are made in the beautiful Macedon Ranges by a mum who hand sews them all individually with love.

Remember those traditional wooden toys you had as a child? We have two Melbourne craftsmen that have been making traditional wooden toys for many years and still make them in their backyard shed’s.

Mike from Croydon makes our gorgeous wooden castle and Teeny motors, while Graeme from Portalington makes our block trolley and bead frame. Both are retired and love making the toys for children.

Donna Hensen, an aboriginal artist from the Wiradjuri People and part of the Winanggaay art project designs our beautiful Australian made indigenous jigsaw puzzles. Eco Toys brings traditional Aboriginal games and puzzles to your children’s play and learning.

Our new range of eco friendly gift cards are all designed and made locally by talented artist Judith Howell and our Living Landscapes Card Game are also designed by Australian artist Lizet Frijters in Far North QLD.

So what about the rest of the toys?

Most are designed and owned by local and Australian companies!

We try not to ship our toys from all the way from Europe as that increases the greenhouse gases caused by the air transport.

By supporting Australian designed toys we are still supporting Australian designers and companies and our toys comply with the highest Australian safety toy standards, so that’s definitely peace of mind!

Sometimes it’s easily forget how important it is for our children to connect to mother nature. 

My daughter reminded me that day . . .

That play can come be created from simple things, like the sticks and shells she found at the beach.

Her creation was magnificent and reminded me to stop and admire the beauty, breathe in the sea air and take pleasure in the simple things in life.

Sometimes it’s our children that teach us life’s most important lessons.

There was once a time when I used to stressfully wander around shopping centres trying to find the perfect present for someone who had everything. That is until I went to Africa, and then my life changed forever. I couldn’t forgot the memories of the severe poverty I had seen and the knowledge that so many children still die from hunger and preventable diseases (one child every 3 seconds)! We live in a society where the more you own, the better off you are but I don’t agree with that. Money doesn’t necessarily bring us happiness and we are made to believe that we need so much more than we really do need. Kids these days want it all, the latest new gadgets and branded new toys, all shiny, plastic, noisy and overstimulating, but there is often little or no thought about how or where these toys are made .

It seems so unfair, so unecessary and although I still really struggle to keep up the Christmas tradition in our family of giving presents, as a family we have sat down and discussed what we want Christmas to mean to us and most importantly to our our daughter Safari.

We believe that Christmas is a time to come together as a community of family and friends and celebrate the love we share for another, but not at the expense of the planet, its people and most importantly our child’s future.

What’s the point of getting a present when a child in a third world country has been forced to work in horrific conditions making it?

What’s the point of eating a lavish meal when we aren’t supporting our local farmers, instead supporting large supermarket chains that use poisonous chemicals and pesticides to produce their food?

So we decided that we would only buy sustainable, handmade  and fair trade gifts to do our bit to make this world a better place.

Last year my wonderful husband built some planter boxes from recycled timber lying around and we planted herbs and veggies and gave one to each family. I hand sewed a doll for my nephew out of his old but favourite pajama’s and I made a picture from natural materials for another friend’s boy for his room.

For gift wrapping we recycled some old cardboard boxes (as you can imagine we have plenty lying around) and my gorgeous girl (yes that’s her!) had an absolute ball painting  and decorating them. There was no need to buy cards as we simply just wrote on the boxes.

We also bought a few chickens from the World Vision smiles catalogue and gave them to a some children.

This year we have done the same and only bought gifts that  are sustainable and won’t end up in landfills.

We have a beautiful native Australian Christmas tree in our home that we bought last year and have had the pleasure of watching it grow as it has almost doubled in size! We decorated it with lovely handmade wool felt decorations made by women in Nepal and decorated our home with hanging mobiles made from recycled newspaper and natural things we have found on our property.

Not only has our home come alive with the natural smells and things collected from our land, our daughter has had such a fun time making them with us. Once the tree is too big to stay in a pot we will plant in in our garden to grow and flourish.

We also sponsor a boy from Tanzania through the World Vision sponsor a child program so we know that we are contributing towards helping another family and community become self sufficient and have the opportunity for a better life. We have his picture next to our Christmas tree as a reminder that we can all do something to make this world a better place.

One day when Safari is old enough we will visit him so she can experience their rich culture without all the materialistic needs that our society places so much emphasise on.

So to us Christmas is about sharing and giving from within our hearts and hopefully Safari will learn that Christmas isn’t about how much you spend, it’s about the joy we spread to other people’s lives.

Check out ‘The story of stuff’, a fantastic documentary on consumerism and damage it causes to our planet.

I believe that we all can make a difference and with change comes a more compassionate and caring society and a happier planet for our children. You don’t have to give up the joy of Christmas but your choices can go a long way!

Looking at the sheer excitment on his face, he was very happy to get another one!

After a little play, it went straight into his mouth to relieve his sore gums! 

His mama said that he loved the old one so much that she felt quite upset when they had lost it.

Why are our cherry wood rattles so good for babies?

• Wood is naturally antibacterial.
• Cherry wood taste’s good.
• 100% totally natural and finished with organic Jojoba oil and beeswax.
• The smell of the wood and the uniqueness of the grain stimulates their senses as they explore the texture.
• It has been handmade by with love.
• It’s the perfect shape and size for little hands!

Each game teaches children about endangered species and their diverse habitats that are being threatened. Play a classic game of Congo chess in magnificent Africa where the almighty Highland Gorilla lives.

Or help the polar bear navigate the ice caps of the Bering Sea to find his way back home in this fantastic game of Polar Bear Labyrinth.

By inspiring children to learn about the world around them and to become aware of important conservation work happening every day we can make a difference!

These games are made from FSC certified wood which ensures that our beautiful natural forests remain unharmed and printed using soy based inks. They come packaged in recycled cardboard boxes made from post consumer waste paper.

So not only do these games teach children about the amazing animals on this planet, they are 100% eco friendly and 5% of proceed from each games goes to support the wonderful work of World Wild Fund.

Sure to inspire a new generation of cool games for kids!

Remember those old time favourites when you were kid? The three legged race or  jumping with all your might as you head to the finish line in a sack race?

Well thanks to Australian company “Fun in Sack” those good old favourites are back again!

We all want our kids to get active and play outdoors, so these game packs are the perfect Christmas present! They are a great for birthday parties, getting the family together for a laugh on Christmas day or for taking with you on holidays this summer.

Our single game packs include the Ring Toss and Egg & Spoon Race but if you want a value game pack we have the 4 in 1 Game Pack which includes 6 hessian bags for a sack race, 3 hessian bands for a three legged race, 6 wooden eggs & spoons for the Egg & Spoon race & a Ring Toss.

I love these games because they promote outdoor & active play and in a world where so many kids grow up playing video and computer games, these games are such a breath of fresh air!

They are made from high quality, natural & eco friendly materials by an Australian company. So you can feel good that you are helping the environment while also getting everyone to have fun together outside!

Click here to view our full range of Outdoor & Active Play Toys.