Homely Toys for Babies by Caroline H. Paton

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 11, 1907

Homely Toys for Babies

By Caroline H. Paton

For the wee babies home-invented toys are far better than the fragile ones offered in the shops, and the demands of such little people are so simple that an intelligent mother will find it no difficult matter to supply them with occupation. I have seen the nine-months-old baby of a friend play for hours with a strong glass bottle, tightly corked and about half-full of water. The little lady would shake the bottle and turn it from side to side, never wearying of the mystery of the motion within it. A marble or a stick in a bottle also makes a good toy, and a rubber band stretched across the top of a chair will give the children an hour with music.

The possibilities of clothes-pins as toys are inexhaustible. With them you can make rail fences, log houses, dollies riding on horseback, and if you will tie a long string to the neck of a clothes-pin, by which to lead it, the child will hail it as any kind of an animal you may suggest, from a pet lamb to an elephant.

Old buttons can be sorted, strung in chains or sewed on bits of cloth, and if you will give the child a lot of old bottles or spools, he will find them to be a delightful lot of dollies with which to form an army or keep a school.—Caroline H. Paton.