Whenever we visit a house which has children, the things that would be shattered all over, under the couch, tables, on the bed, in the lawn etc would be toys. The toys are generally linked with children. These days? toys are being manufactured using a lot of materials like plastic, synthetic fiber, rubber, wood, mud-sand and other polymers. Wooden toys are the most environment friendly toys; they do not pollute the atmosphere when they are decomposed, unlike the plastics. The first toy that was manufactured by the primitive men was the boomerang, which is a carved piece of wood which when thrown properly will hit the target and return to the thrower. These wooden toys became popular after it was being portrayed in the movie Tarzan and children started buying them from the stores to play at home safely.



Another example for the wooden toy is the wooden rocking horse which allows the children to mount on them and have fun rocking upon it. This wooden rocking toy has come in different models like a rocking wooden bike, rocking scooter, rocking dog, rocking wooden swan etc. These wooden toys are mainly used by small babies to children up to the age of 5, when they are learning to sit upright and walk. There are also wooden walkers specially made for babies, which has an enclosing framework on wheels which helps the babies to balance themselves on the floor while walking and they can have a firm grip on it. These wooden toys have another advantage that they are cheap and easily available.

The wooden toys are designed for the school going children, in such a way that they involve their imagination and creativity in creating something new. The world maps and country maps on a wooden board have their countries and states split into various small parts of wood and the children have to fix them at the appropriate places according to their knowledge of the place or guessing the place using the shape of the wood. This game can also be extended to be used for arranging a puzzled maze into a correct figure given, like that of a face of a tiger or a place etc. Some children have affliction towards toys which portray army men, army gadgets etc. These toys can also be made of wood. In South India, during the dusshera festival, they is a toy show displayed in each and every house and you can find wide varieties of toys made of mud and wood and are respected as deities during that festival and they do prayers and offerings to those toys.

Now, coming to the most interesting and intellectual game - the Rubik's cube which is a popular puzzle that analyzes the problem solving skills of a person which is made of plastic or polymer was originally made of wood early in the 3rd century BC in Greece, later followed by Iran, Japan and China. These wooden toys had different names such as puzzle locks, tangram puzzle etc.