Hi, it's Sunday with Sarah. I'm
Sarah Baldwin, owner of Bella Luna Toys.
Thanks for joining me. I get a lot
of questions from parents: comments on the blog,
emails, phone calls, from parents who want to know my
top favorite picks of Waldorf toys, or top recommendations.
A lot of these parents want to
transition from plastic, mainstream
toys to more natural, wooden Waldorf toys,
or want to transform their child's bedroom or playroom.
And they want to know: "What are the must-haves?"
So today, I'm going to share with you five of my top favorite toys —
Waldorf toys — and tell you a little bit about them.
So, let me show you.
This is one of my very favorites.
This is our little Heavy Baby doll, and
this is a weighted doll. This is the smaller of two sizes
we carry. This one is two and a half pounds,
and the bigger Heavy Baby is four and a half pounds. And what's so special about these dolls is they are filled
with millet that has been scented with lavender.
So they smell amazing,
and he's dressed
in cotton velour — organic cotton velour, so soft —
and this doll, because of its weight, has the
feel of a real, newborn baby.
and it's just so calming and soothing
for a child to hold, and also as an adult. Every mom
I've ever handed this doll to has the same reaction: she'll take it and go, "Oh!",
surprised by the weight, and then begins to
bounce it, and rock it, or put it on her
shoulder, because it's just so real and lifelike.
These are handmade for us by a dollmaker
in the US, and this is just one of my
very, very favorite items, and
I'll do another blog post someday on boys and dolls, and why I
think all boys should have a baby doll. But this is a great doll
for either a boy or a girl, and especially good for a
child who needs calming. Another
top recommendation, classic Waldorf
"toys," although they're not really toys but
playthings, is a basket of playsilks, and here I've
got a basket of all different colors. These are beautiful
silks from Sarah's Silks. Another question I get is,
am I Sarah of Sarah's Silks? No, I'm not. That would be Sarah
Lee, who's been dyeing playsilks and silk playthings
for many years from California, although she used to live in
Maine. And what's wonderful
about playsilks is they're so nourishing
for a young child's senses. They're just
so soft and silky to touch.
That's one feature of Waldorf toys, is
when they're nourishing to the touch,
they're also kind of calming, and
invite a certain kind of gentler
play. So playsilks can be
become dress-up, they can become a cape,
they can become a veil,
a child can be
a pirate, it can become a belt to hold a
wooden sword, and the other way they're played with
is children will make setups.
Here's a basket of Ostheimer
wooden toys, and a green silk
can become a field for farm animals.
Farmer's wife,
or you can use silks in puppet plays, or children will make a story
with their wooden figures or other puppets. And let's see,
A blue silk can become
a pond for the ducks
to swim on.
If you had a brown silk, it could become a mountain.
So sometimes,
adults see these baskets of silks and think,
"These are toys? How do children play with them?"
But you give a basket of playsilks to a child,
and they have no trouble finding all kinds of uses for them, uses
that we haven't even imagined
yet. Over here,
these are Waldorf
playstands, and I had
two pairs of these in my classroom. And they are
another classic Waldorf toy that can be used in so
very many ways. The shelf can become
a little puppet theater.
They can use the shelf for playing store, and it comes with or without
this arch or canopy, and if you put the canopy on top,
this is a long silkscape, a long silk from Sarah's Silks,
draped over. So of course, it can become a little house.
And parents often ask me about doll houses,
and they'd like to get a dollhouse for their two- or three-year-old.
But I always tell them, a child, a two- or three-year-old, doesn't need
a dollhouse to put dolls in, they need to build a house and be inside it.
They like to nestle and get cozy inside. So,
playstands are really great, and
another toy that can be used in so many ways.
Without the canopy on it, you can take the two playstands and move them around
in different configurations; you can use them to wall off a little corner of a room,
and perhaps wall off a little play kitchen.
And here's another one of my favorites. A wooden play kitchen
like this one invites children to
imitate the work of adults, which is something young children
love to do. They see their mommies and daddies cooking.
They like to pretend to cook. And
you could even — if you have room —
put a play kitchen in your real kitchen, and they can pretend to cook
alongside of you. It's nice to have a little table with chairs near this,
so they can have tea parties and cook and entertain.
But I've found the play kitchen corner
in my kindergarten classroom was the most heavily used
area of the classroom. And
last but not least is my very, number one
top recommendation. And if you've been following me any length of time at all, you've
probably heard me talk about them before. And that is the Waldorf
rocker board. It's just a curved piece of wood,
and children will rock on it.
Now, I'll show you how strong it is. We've tested this with a 250-pound man,
and it's really strong.
It's holding my weight, and I'll tell you,
this is a great workout, even for an adult. We have these in our office, and sometimes when I need to
relieve a little stress,
or just move if I've been sitting at my desk too long, I'll get up and rock on the
board. So, children will stand on it and rock on it
like this; a small child will lie on their back
on it. It becomes a cradle;
it can become a cradle for a
baby doll. And you can
flip it over, and it becomes a bridge.
Again, so strong it will hold me.
"Trip, trap, trip, trap, trip, trap," like the Three Billy Goats Gruff
over the bridge. And it can become another stage
for a puppet play.
It's got so many uses. Oh! And you can also put
one end up on a
table, or on the end of a playstand, or coffee table,
and it becomes a slide. When you have
four of them, it will make a complete circle, and children —
in my classroom, I had four of them, and they'd make a little nest inside.
And this is just such a quintessential Waldorf toy,
because it's simple, it's open-ended, which means it can be played with
in any number of ways; there's not one right way to
do it. But there you have it.
Those are my top picks. And we're going to do a special giveaway
for one of these rocker boards.
So if you're watching this video on YouTube or Facebook, be sure to come
to my blog, moonchildblog.com,
for a chance to enter. Your own Waldorf rocker board.
So, thanks so much for tuning in,
and I will see you again soon. Bye-bye.