Chapter XV: The Toy Age

“Choose his toys wisely and then leave him alone with them. Leave
him to the throng of emotional impressions they will call into
being. Remember that they speak to his feelings when his mind is
not yet open to reason. The toy at this period is surrounded with
a halo of poetry and mystery, and lays hold of the imagination and
the heart.

“When we have restored playthings to their place in education—a
place which assigns them the principal part in the development
of human sympathies—we can later put into the hands of children
objects whose impressions will reach their minds more particularly.”

—KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN.

=The Toy Age.= When the baby first begins to grasp objects and stare at them, the toy age begins, that is, at about four weeks. It increases rapidly in force during the first year, and from two to about ten years is in its height. It declines with the approach of adolescence and by twelve is devoted chiefly to apparatus for games. It wanes With the decline of imaginative play and gives way to the interest in reading and industries.

=Education through Toys.= Toys, as the child’s constant, most intimate companions and most used implements during these impressionable years, inevitably have a marked influence upon his character and development. Froebel was the first great modern educator to appreciate the significance of a child’s toys, and to apply himself to the task of selecting and inventing those that would best develop his creative self-activity, his personality and happiness. The blocks or “gifts” that he devised are valuable for their simplicity, their variety of form, and their purpose of giving to the child an increasing number of forms as he grows in imaginative and constructive ability. Froebel did not appreciate, as modern biology has taught us, that the little child is in the stage of fundamental muscle activity, and that the accessory muscles (finer muscles, of fingers and eyes) do not develop completely for steady use until after six or seven years. Froebel, therefore, used the 1-inch cubes, which hygienists to-day discard for the larger size,—at least 2-inch for table use and paving-block size for floor use.

How far are children’s expressions of desire for toys, as they visit a toy shop, an index to the value of these toys, or their permanent interest in them at home? Relatively slight. Here again it is necessary to distinguish between the child’s passing whim and his vital interest. Children are momentarily attracted by the gorgeous, the vivid-colored, by noise, rhythm, motion, the imitation of adult activities. This explains their superficial interest, while in a toy shop, in the realistic French doll with wonderful clothes and a speaking voice, in the mechanical toys, the flimsy little nonentities. At home, in the playroom, the flimsy nonentities are soon broken and cast away without more than a ripple of emotion, and the realistic French doll languishes alone in her glory, while plain Mary Jane receives the daily ministrations of affection and comradeship.

It is these factors of glitter, noise, rhythm, imitation, physical activity, combined with the possibilities of movement and counter-movement, augmented by the attitude and remarks of their elders, who, assuming the reasonableness of war, praise military activities, that explain the child’s interest in military toys. Any other toys that have these same qualities will hold the child’s enthusiasm as well. Engines, trains and their crews, fire engines and firemen, steamboats and sailors, life-savers, fishermen, policemen, mines and miners, steeplejacks, divers, carpenters, painters, farmers,—there is a great range of possibilities. It is true many of these are not yet to be had in the toyshops, but they will be found there as soon as the demand is sufficient. It should be noted, in passing, that the military toys have been imported from foreign countries, where war has been considered the climax of virtue, and where little children, especially in the royal families, were systematically imbued with a spirit of military prowess. The consequences are written so large that “the wayfaring man though a fool cannot err thereby.” International peace will begin in the nursery, in the training in ideals of activity and heroism that are constructive and helpful, not destructive.

In “A Story of a Sand Pile”, Doctor G. Stanley Hall comments: “It is a striking feature, to which I have observed no exception, that the more finished and like reality the objects became, the less interest the boys had in them. As the tools, houses, etc., acquired feature after feature of verisimilitude, the sphere of the imagination was restricted, as it is with too finished toys, and thus one of the chief charms of play was lost.”

=Dolls.= In a questionnaire-study made by Clark University of children’s interest in dolls, eliciting returns from nearly a thousand children, the following interests were noted.

(a) The favorite dolls were simple, even rude, with few
accessories, curly hair, four to twelve inches in size, could be
washed and handled in every way, taken everywhere.

(b) Dolls representing children or adults were preferred to baby
dolls.

(c) Interest in very small or very large dolls, and paper dolls,
developed after eight or nine years.

(d) Boys preferred dolls representing monkeys, animals, heroes,
dragons, etc.

Quoting from Doctor Hall’s comments on this study:

The educational value of dolls is enormous. It educates the
heart and will even more than the intellect, and to learn how to
control and apply doll-play will be to discover a new instrument
in education of the very highest potency. Every parent and every
teacher who can deal with individuals at all should study the
doll habits of each child, now discouraging and repressing, now
stimulating by hint or suggestion.

Too many accessories lessen the educational value of this play
in teaching children to put themselves in the parents’ place,
in deepening love of children, and of motherhood. Children with
French dolls incline to practice their little French upon them; can
this tendency be utilized in teaching a foreign language to young
children?...

The rudest doll has the great advantage of stimulating the
imagination by giving it more to do than does the elaborately
finished doll. It can also enter more fully into the child’s
life, because it can be played with more freely without danger of
being soiled or injured. With rude dolls, too, the danger both of
hypertrophy and of too great prolongation of the doll instinct
is diminished. The child’s interest is opposed to large, elegant
French dolls which teach love of dress and suggest luxury, and
dolls with too many mechanical devices, as for winking, walking,
speaking, and singing, against which the Russian Toy Congress
has so strongly protested. Rather small and durable dolls, soft
enough not to hurt, flexible, with two or three colors and not more
than two or three garments, along with plenty of hints regarding
clothespins, flowers, and other varied material,—something like
this seems to be the suggestion for a first doll, with increasing
variation in size, material, elaborateness, and number till the
doll passion vanishes in two dimensions, with innumerable paper
dolls, towards adolescence.

That boys are naturally fond of and should play with dolls as
well as girls, there is abundant indication. One boy in a family
of girls, or boys who are only children, often play with dolls
up to seven or eight years of age. It is unfortunate that this is
considered so predominantly a girl’s play. Most boys abandon it
early or never play, partly because it is thought girlish by adults
as well as by children. Of course, boy life is naturally rougher
and demands a wider range of activities. The danger, too, of making
boy milliners is of course obvious, but we are convinced that, on
the whole, more play with girl dolls by boys would tend to make
them more sympathetic with girls as children, if not more tender
with their wives and with women later. Again, boys as well as girls
might be encouraged to play with boy dolls more than at present,
with great advantage to both. Boys, too, seem to prefer exceptional
dolls, clowns, brownies, colored, Eskimo, Japanese, etc. Boys, too,
seem fonder than girls of monkey and animal dolls, and are often
very tender of these, when they maltreat dolls in human shape.
Again, dolls representing heroes of every kind and non-existent
beings, dragons, and hobgoblins find their chief admirers among
boys.

It seems to be about the age of six, three years before the
culmination of the doll passion, that the conflict between fancy
and reality becomes clearly manifest. Abandonment to the doll
illusion and the length of the doll period decreases as dolls
and their accessories become elaborate. With every increase of
knowledge of anatomy or of the difference between living tissue and
dead matter, between life and mechanism, this element of doll play
must wane.

Tests of Good Toys

Lovable

Durable in composition and workmanship

Stimulating to imagination, analysis, invention, initiative,
activity, workmanship

Adapted to experimentation, investigation or constructive purposes

Adapted to the child’s stage of development, viz., his motor
ability, his interests, his mental development

Sanitary, washable; without inaccessible corners to harbor dirt and
germs

Artistic in form, color, expression; that is, simple in design,
harmonious in color, genuine, without either sentimentality or
thorough realism

* * * * *

The purpose of toys is not merely to amuse the child but to call
forth fuller expression of his self-activity.

Harmful Toys

Unpardonable Defects

Physical:

Dangerous: having sharp edges, corners or points; pins or tacks,
small bells, buttons, ornaments, that may be pulled off and
swallowed

Unhygienic: not washable; paint or dye that runs; made in
unsanitary factory; too small for child’s stage of development

Inartistic: jangling, harsh, metallic, discordant sounds;
unsymmetrical, poorly proportioned, ugly shapes; unharmonious
or harsh colors; simpering, ugly, or unwholesome expressions on
dolls or animals.

Flimsy in material or workmanship

Psychological:

Mechanical, merely amusing the child, making him only a spectator
instead of providing a means for his own creative activity

Military, demoralizing for the following reasons:

(_a_) they cultivate the spirit of destructiveness rather than
constructiveness;

(_b_) they foster callousness toward the value of human life;

(_c_) they give a wholly wrong impression of the meaning of war,
omitting its destructive social and industrial effects, and
overemphasizing the joy of its enthusiasm and rhythm.

Over-realistic, super-refined,—especially dolls

Especially to be avoided under six years are toys having:

sharp points, corners, edges;

small bells or detachable ornaments;

paint which easily comes off;

flimsy toys easily broken;

woolly animals (unless washable and washed);

popguns;

fine material, sometimes sold as “Kindergarten material”, _e.g._,
sewing cards, paper mats, straws, small beads, sticks, peg
boards, crayons, blocks.

=Mechanical Toys.= Doctor Hall comments on this:

Mechanical toys, more than any others, seem to have the shortest
existence in the hands of bright, active children, a fact which
suggests that toys so constructed as to show principles of
motion and elementary physical laws, without involving their
own destruction, are an educational need yet to be supplied.
This destructive form of curiosity, due to normal development of
mentally active children, needing guidance, and to be furnished
with a proper outlet, but not repressed, is not to be confused with
the careless destruction of toys, due to lack of interest, which
is unfortunately common in children whose interests and powers of
appreciation have been weakened and dissipated by overloading them
with toys and diversions until it has bred in them an ennui which
has sapped their power of attention and left them incapable of
self-entertainment. Healthy children, if allowed to develop under
normal conditions, find interests and amusements for themselves,
and the child who has been so reared that he wants to be constantly
amused, and has no keen desires because they have been too
frequently anticipated, has been deprived of one of the rights of
childhood.

A baby’s early motor interests are in the things which he himself
can do, and disappointed friends and relatives have often found
their gifts of mechanical toys a failure, simply because they
have too far anticipated the natural development, and the toy
has proved either a source of fear or failed to excite special
interest. In fact, even at a later period, mechanical toys
which are too complicated in construction or too delicate to
bear investigation, which are apt to be clumsy, soon lose their
attractiveness, while something that can be taken to pieces and put
together by unskilled fingers, so that it will “go again” may prove
of continued interest.

And Kate Douglas Wiggin writes: “Every thoughtful person knows that the simple, natural playthings of the old-fashioned child, which are nothing more than pegs on which he hangs his glowing fancies, are healthier than our complicated modern mechanisms, in which the child has only to press the button and the toy does the rest.”

=The Treatment of Toys.= The right treatment of toys has far-reaching educational values in orderliness, thrift, prudence, depth of emotion, generosity, genuineness. The child who has a small number of durable toys that will stand the strain of usage and therefore accumulate years of associations and emotions, is having an education in genuineness and emotional strength, while the child who has a great number of flimsy toys that rapidly disappear is being trained in superficiality and shallowness. The child whose toys are promptly repaired when broken is being trained in prudence and orderliness, and still more so when, even during his second year, he is responsible for keeping them orderly and neat. The child who is surfeited with gifts, or who is allowed to spend his pennies prodigally for cheap jimcracks, is being trained in extravagance, shortsightedness, and discontent; while the one who is given a reasonable number of gifts and is taught to save his pennies and think carefully of worth-while toys to buy, is being trained in thriftiness, foresight, and satisfaction.

A Guide to Toys for Children

=First Year.= Utilizing hand, forearm, upper arm.

Sensory and Motor Experience

1 to 4 months:
Rod to grasp
Rubber or celluloid ball or doll
Semi-sphere of rubber or wood

4 months:
Celluloid dumb-bell

5 months:
Montessori sand boxes
Paper to crumple
Small enamel or tin cup

6 months:
Wooden ball
Mirror, pocket size, in frame
Spoon
Leather reins to pull upon, with musical bells
Rubber balls, each covered with one of primary colors
(crocheted of cotton or silk)

8 months:
Picture book, linen, large, colored pictures
Small hand bell
Water toys—fish, swans

9 months:
Kitchen utensils in variety of shapes, sizes
(no sharp edges or points, non-breakable)
Rolling pin, pie tins, Clothespins
Football

10 months:
Hard vegetables and fruits; potato, apple, squash, cucumber,
carrots, eggplant (shapes, sizes, colors)

12 months:
Japanese gong
Tube
Rubber, wooden, or celluloid toys, _e.g._, doll, dog, cat

=One to Two Years.= Large size implements for forearm, whole arm, trunk; sensory and motor experience; color, sound, experimentation.

Wooden mallet, large nails, and bar of soap

Sand box and stones

Bucket and spoons, dipper

Variety of balls

Football

Wooden blocks 2 × 4 inches

Nests of balls, dolls

Spools

Kitchen utensils

Hard fruits and vegetables

2 or 3 dolls; 2 or 3 toy animals (rubber, celluloid, or wood)

Chair swing

Stationary ladder, 4 to 6 rungs

Rope to pull up weight

Montessori wooden cylinders

=Two to Four Years.= Utilizing fundamental muscles, sensory and motor activities, imagination, construction.

Imaginative Play

Dolls: Unbreakable, washable, 4 to 12 inches long
baby and adult dolls; girl and boy dolls

Doll accessories: Pewter or enamel dishes, cooking
utensils, stove

Laundry equipment, especially tub and flatiron;
broom

Doll cradle

Doll’s house

Noah’s Ark: Dogs, horses, cats, bears, in rubber,
celluloid, wood

Jack-in-box

Nested balls, dolls

Outdoor, Active

Wheelbarrow, wagon

Train of cars, boat

Velocipede

Fire engine

Horse reins

Garden tools; pail and shovel Balls: Football, large rubber with
pictures; wooden; small rubber with spectrum colors

Tenpins

Rubber balloons

Constructive

Blocks; large size, as paving blocks, in hard wood, utilizing
trunk and arms, for floor use; 2-inch cubes and half-cubes for
table use; cut exactly to inch measures, if possible; range of
sizes for towers; interlocking blocks

Montessori tower and stair

Carpentry tools; real tools in child’s size

Sand, modeling clay, paints, large size crayola; blackboard or
large sheets Manila paper (2 × 3 feet)

Large wooden beads, pegboard

Sliced animals, birds

Soap bubble apparatus

Sticks in ¼ and ½ inch diameters, assorted lengths, 4 to 36 inch;
plain, or dyed in primary colors

Color bobbins, spools, blocks

Quart and pint measures

Sand forms

Clothespins, boxes, spools

Stones, leaves, twigs, acorn cups

Zinc sand box; can be purchased; or a box may be made, having
boards free from splinters, or planed smooth, lined with zinc
(leaving no rough edges or corners), or made waterproof with
several coats of cheap varnish.

Toy bank

Musical toys:

Triangle, tubephone, musical bells, drum, trumpet, horn (with
care for mouth hygiene); toy musical notes and bars for later
months

=Four to Six Years.= Fundamental muscles. Imagination,
construction, measuring; experimenting with mechanical principles,
simple chemistry, electricity; making toys.

Imaginative Play

Dolls (for both girls and boys)
Unbreakable, washable
Representing children of different races, countries
Doll accessories:
Carriage, trunk
Doll houses more complete
Stove and cooking utensils more ample
Laundry equipment that can be used
Indian suits (fireproof)
Punch and Judy
Toy theater
Kaleidoscope; magnets

Musical

Continue those of previous period

Wind harp, bugle or flute, tambourine, musical bells and glasses,
toy piano

Outdoor, Active

Continue those of previous period
Garden tools, usable
Watering can, trowel
Tenpins, top, hoop, ringtoss
Balls (add bouncing ball, volley ball)

Constructive

Continue those of previous period

Blocks as previous period; add round, triangular, cylindrical;
variety of geometric shapes

Stone mosaics (1 to 2-inch size) for parquetry

Picture puzzles

Paint book, drawing paper

Blunt scissors

Paste

Foot rule, yardstick

Gill, gallon, peck, bushel measures

Counter or small spring scales, weighing accurately

Thermometer

Meccano, interlocking blocks

Apparatus for constructing toy telephones, signals, motor toys

=Six to Nine Years.= Accessory muscles utilized. Imagination,
imitation, construction, measuring, industrial play, making many
toys.

Imaginative Play

Dolls (add china, bisque, paper)

Dolls representing other nationalities, historic or literary
characters; stunt dolls

Doll accessories, both smaller and larger sizes; china dishes

Dominoes, checkers

Toy store

Toy theater

Toy money, stamps

Musical

Whistles, bugle, flute, mouth harp (care for mouth hygiene)

Autoharp or zither, toy piano (musical quality); violin or cello

Toy notes and bars; music note blocks

Outdoor, Active

Balls (add volley, hand, medicine, football, rubber bouncing)

Baseball and bat

Marbles, jackstones, tops

Kites, bow and arrows, battledore, grace hoops, jumping rope

Skates (both feet), stilts

Croquet, tennis racket, punching bag

Substantial wagon, trains, garden tools

Constructive

Blocks: Anchor, 1-inch sizes; dominoes, checkers
Knife, modeling clay, sand, paints, paint book, small crayola
Weaving frame; small beads, raffia, reed
Scrap pictures; straws, pasteboard parquetry
Stencil blocks
Apparatus for making toys, as in previous period
Camera
Radiopticon
Stereoscope
Clock that can be taken apart