toys Archives - My Little Robins

Passive toys encourage active play. Find alternatives to popular active toys.

I’ve been on a mission to pare down our toys to things that really benefit my children, and contribute to the learning atmosphere. I recently wrote about active and passive toys– active toys light up and entertain, while passive toys require the child to think and really engage. Passive toys don’t do anything!

Magda Gerber, early childhood learning guru said of passive toys:

They will only respond when the infant activates them. In other words our active infant manipulates passive objects. In contrast, entertaining kinds of toys, such as mobiles or later on, windup toys, cause a passive infant to watch an active toy. This trains the child to expect to be amused and entertained, and sets the scene for later TV watching.

We haven’t completely banned these entertaining active toys from our home, but here are some alternatives to toys that we like.

Passive Toys for Infants and Toddlers

Walkers

We have this lion walker. E loves pushing it around, but it doesn’t offer a lot more than that. He presses the song buttons, and they make Mama want to pull out her hair. If I had to do it all over again, I would have gotten him a wooden push toy, like this one from Alex. I love that it has gears, and a mix-and-match giraffe.

Play Mats

This is our beloved Kick and Play Piano mat. We call it the “Kicky piano” and I even sang a special song when I put my babies down to play (that’s embarrassing). It was basically a babysitter because my babies played with it for a long time. Even though a baby won’t play imaginatively with a passive toy, the Skip Hop play mat would be a lovelier addition to the home atmosphere!

Music and Activity Tables

I have to confess that this Fisher Price music table is a huge hit in our house. Miss H still plays with it, although it’s much more appropriate for Baby E now! Even though it’s an active toy, we have found many different ways to play with it. It is often a cash register, a library desk, and sometimes even aids in fort building. But if you’re looking for a passive, prettier alternative, wooden activity cubes are a good choice! We don’t have this B Zany Wooden Activity cube, but my kids have played with it, and it is really cute. The only downside is that it doesn’t have many opportunities for open-ended play, but it is appropriate for young toddlers. *Note* This toy is less expensive at Target, but I needed to use the pretty picture from Amazon 🙂

Talking Puppy

This is the Laugh and Learn puppy that randomly started talking when I was home alone. Miss H had fun with it for awhile, but I realized that it was very closed ended. Maybe it helped her learn her colors, but it’s overall added value to our home was very low. A good, old-fashioned stuffed animal has lots of opportunities for open-ended play. Miss H has this yellow lab, named Spot, and he is a main character in a lot of her make-believe games.

Passive Toys for Preschoolers

Tablets

We have an old Kindle Fire that we tried to give to Miss H for a long car trip. As much as we love the Kindle Fire for an eReader, it wasn’t great for a learning tablet. She had trouble navigating the games, and it often got stuck, causing drama on the road. Plus, we didn’t want to get into a screen time habit by offering her the tablet to entertain herself. Fortunately, she loves this drawing board even more than screens. For awhile, she called her iPad! She practices counting, writes letters, and draws pictures. She also uses her Imagination Magnets to make shapes on her drawing board.

Musical Guitar

I’m not sure how many times we have given this as a gift, because it is so cute! Now that I’m aware of how active toys affect our home atmosphere, I apologize if we gave this to your child! It’s so fun, but so noisy! The alternative toy is just a cute, simple guitar that a child can actually make their own music with. We love the Hape brand, but this guitar isn’t one we own.

Workbench

I mentioned in my last post that we are getting a workbench for Baby E this Christmas. We did alllll the research (which Nate is really adamant about!) We decided against

Step 2 workbench because it was a little more closed ended. Also, the tools are battery operated, which I foresaw as a problem! Instead, we chose the Hape workbench, which also happens to be pretty cute to look at!

I hope this gives you some fun alternatives to think about when buying toys for your children!

My commitment to only introduce our children to beautiful, wooden toys without battery compartments lasted approximately two months. One day, I left my two-month-old first born with her daddy and headed out to spend a Toys R Us gift card that I had received from one of my students. I spent an hour walking up and down the rows full of brightly colored, plastic, battery-operated toys. I was mesmerized. I complete forgot my stance on ugly, talking toys, and gravitated towards a play gym with a musical piano and brightly colored mat. When I got home, my husband raised an eyebrow and said, “I knew that wouldn’t last!”

That was before I learned about Charlotte Mason.

Things have changed a little in our home, although you will still see a few battery operated toys here and there. Even though Charlotte Mason only tangentially mentioned toys in her volumes, there are a few Parent’s Review articles that share some guidance in this area.

(This post was updated October 2018)

Toys in the Charlotte Mason Home

Some education philosophies come with their own toys: Montessori toys, Waldorf toys…there are no Charlotte Mason toys. But in the Parents’ Review article, “Our Children’s Play: Their Toys and Books,” Mrs C Hatchell describes some principles for choosing toys.

Finite and Suggestive, Active and Passive Toys

I read some time ago that children’s toys may be divided into two classes: the finite, and the suggestive.”

In Mrs. Hatchell’s article, she describes finite and suggestive toys. Today, these are most often referred to as active and passive toys. Finite, or active toys, do the work for your child. They entertain rather than meaningfully engage. Finite toys do not allow much room for playing and creativity. They have one distinct purpose.

Now, to give an example of the first, e.g., the finite or non-suggestive toys…Nothing is left for the child to do, or for its imagination or ingenuity to supply.”

Some examples of these sorts of toys are:

iPads
Light up activity tables
Remote controlled cars

Suggestive, or passive, toys inspire creative play and fully engage a child, making them great gifts for a birthday or Christmas present. Mrs. Hatchell described a crane toy that her child was fully engaged with lifting and lowering the basket:

How much better and how much more interest was got out of this, than if it had been a more elaborate toy with the drag already supplied, and nothing left to the child’s own ingenuity or imagination.”

A child education specialist one very much like, Magda Gerber, said, “In other words, our active infant manipulates passive objects. In contrast, entertaining kinds of toys, such as mobiles or later on, wind-up toys, cause a passive infant to watch an active toy.”

Thus comes the phrase, “Passive toys make active learners.”

I think Magda Gerber’s quote above is interesting for two reason:

Froebel, the Father of Kindergarten, whom Charlotte Mason respected, was a proponent of mobiles for infants. However, he was also a proponent of creative, free play, and even created a set of open-ended toys called Froebel’s Gifts, with which children used to create and demonstrate their strengths.
Mrs. Hatchell mentioned windup toys in a similar way as Magda Gerber. She said, “There are too many of these purely mechanical toys now, as for instance, animals that you wind and they go round and round in one direction, till the spring breaks.”

So, instead of dumbed-down toys that just entertain our children, a Charlotte Mason family should consider how a toy will engage our children. Mrs. Hatchell said:

Let us remember, that in our children’s “play” as well as in their “books,” are many opportunities afforded to us of training habits which will form an important part in their live hereafter…”

Recommended “Charlotte Mason Toys”

Like I mentioned before, there aren’t really Charlotte Mason toys, but Mrs. Hatchell did recommend some specific things for children to play with.

Mechanical crane (which I think we can apply to other vehicles that require children to engage, like dump trucks)
An empty, homemade doll house
Sand tray (this is also how Charlotte Mason recommended that young children practice their letters)
Modeling clay (Play doh??)
Dolls

Our Favorite Toys

In our home, filled with two boys and a girl, I know that we have more toys than homes of the early 20th century, but we most likely have fewer toys than average modern households. We try to choose passive toys that are open-ended, allowing our children multiple ways to play. Here are some of our favorites (I’ve used affiliate links here):

LA Newborn doll and bath tub– Miss H requested this newborn baby doll shortly after her baby brother was born. Her name is Martha, and she is a favorite toy in our family. Both of our older children enjoy giving Martha baths, feeding her, and changing her. I can see how these actions build habits of kindness, gentleness, and attentiveness.
Tonka dump truck– We got our son, who was two at the time, the biggest dump truck we could find for Christmas last year. Like the crane that Mrs. Hatchell described, this dump truck has moving parts that allow for creative play. This is mostly an outdoor toy, and most often gets filled with grass and sand to transport it to another part of the yard (you can read about how transporting is a universal part of play here.)
Blocks- Blocks have been mentioned in some Parent’s Review articles, and we have quite the assortment of them at our house! Creativity is a must when building. We like wooden blocks, Duplos, and magnetic blocks

Questions to Consider When Choosing Toys

Is this too perfect for a child?

The toys that we give our children should be of good quality, but not so extremely perfect that play is limited. In a Parent’s Review article about Froebel’s kindergarten, the author says:

we should be careful to give them good toys–toys which will call forth their inventive powers, and a not too lavish supply of these. And more, we must teach our children games in which scope is given for the display of original thought, for inventive self-activity. This is what kindergarten games do, and this is why they are so deservedly popular with little children.”

In a somewhat contrasting thought, Mrs. Hatchell said:

the continually increasing wealth and perfection of toys also serve to produce dullness in children, or else destructiveness as the only form of activity left to them in relation to these too-perfect toys.

It’s up to you to decide how perfect is too perfect. Are you going to get upset if something happens to the toy?

Is this toy twaddle?

Twaddle is the word Charlotte Mason used to describe books that are silly and meaningless. The word usually describes speech or writing, but I think we can stretch it to mean anything trivial or foolish. Is the toy dumbed-down?

What habits will this help my child develop?

This is a question I haven’t yet asked myself about the toys we own, but after reading Mrs. Hatchell’s words, I think it’s an important one. In addition to habits, I think some toys afford great opportunities in developing skills, like fine or gross motor skills.

Popular Active Toys and Their Passive Toy Alternatives