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When I told the students in my fourth grade class we were going to be making kites, they were both excited and skeptical. None of them had had much experience with homemade toys, so they assumed kites could be purchased only from stores. As they made their kites, with great care and patience, the children changed their minds about what kids could create.

The students decorated their kites with a remarkable array of designs: swirling clouds and dragons, insects with glasses, tropical flowers, rockets and planes of every imaginable shape. The kites were so beautiful that many students were reluctant to take them down from the walls of the classroom where they had been hanging and actually fly them. But fly them we did.

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Some of the kites took to the air with ease, and some of them never got aloft no matter what flying strategies were used. Other kites appeared incapable of flight, but suddenly became airborne when a child made a slight adjustment to the strut or the tail or the tension on the string. When these reluctant kites finally went up, there was much rejoicing along with animated explanations of kite-flying strategies. As kites rose and fell, heated debates arose about what makes a kite fly well, followed by vows to make even more aerodynamic kites in the future. The kids’ sense of pride in their kites was palpable. No store-bought kites could have brought these children as close to the mystery and physics of flight as their own creations.

The wonder and pleasure that my students derived from their kites is a common experience for children making and playing with homemade toys. Homemade toys can be divided into three basic categories: toys created by children, toys adults teach children to make; and toys adults make for children. All three types are valuable for different reasons, and are by no means mutually exclusive or unconnected. For example, toys that parents make for their children might be the inspiration the children need to design playthings of their own creation.

Toys Created by Children

Toys invented by children themselves are usually more open-ended than commercial toys. Child-created toys are as protean as the child’s imagination. The old refrigerator box may be a house one day, a boat the next day, and a train the day after that.

When I was eight, a friend and I used old shoe boxes and other odds and ends to build a school for dollhouse people. We were very concerned about getting every detail of our miniature school just right. We had spool desks and matchbox chairs, as well as tiny illustrated books and doll-sized pencils made from the broken tips of regular pencils. We spent hours planning and debating each new part of the school. It is difficult to imagine children lavishing such care and thoughtfulness on a premade toy schoolhouse they pulled out of a box.

Children tend to cherish the toys they have created by themselves because the toys are the product of their own ideas and initiative. Parents need not, and indeed should not, direct this kind of independent toymaking. But parents can facilitate their children’s explorations by providing them with an array of common materials found around the home, such as boxes, egg and milk cartons, yogurt containers, fabric scraps, plastic jugs, buttons, string, pipe cleaners, and clothespins.

Toys Adults Teach Children to Make

The toys that parents show their children how to make are often classic toys they themselves played with as children: newspaper hats, sock puppets, walnut shell boats, dollhouses, pinwheels. Many of these traditional toys are unavailable in stores or are manufactured in such a way that they lose their simplicity and charm.

When children make toys with an adult, they frequently become curious about how the toys work. I showed a five year old how to make a kazoo out of a cardboard tube, wax paper, and a rubber band. She was delighted by the kazoo’s high-pitched noise, but she was also interested in taking the kazoo apart and putting it together again to find out how it made such a weird sound. If I had given her a store-bought kazoo, she would have been less likely to consider how it worked because she would never have seen the process by which it was constructed. My class’s interest in what makes kites fly is another example of the way toymaking can spark children’s curiosity about how things work.

Teaching children how to make a toy can be a memorable and meaningful way to spend time with them. Long after I have forgotten various wagons and bikes I owned as a child, I remember a go-cart my father taught me how to build. The go-cart was important not only because it was fun to build and ride, but also because I had worked on it with my father and knew that he had once had a similar go-cart.

Toys Adults Make for Children

Like the toys parents show their children how to make, the toys parents make for their children take on special meaning for the whole family. The doll a mother gradually sews for her child becomes a tangible expression of love. The child, in turn, may care for the handmade doll more than a store-bought one because she senses the doll’s connection to her mother.

For parents expecting a baby, creating homemade toys can be a way of imagining the new arrival during the long nine months of anticipation. When I was pregnant with my son, I knitted him a Tomten, a kind of Swedish elf that traditionally protects houses and farms. The Tomten helped me envision my son’s safe arrival as well as his delight at seeing the funny bearded doll when he was old enough to play with it. Now as I watch my son feed the Tomten pretend food and put the Tomten to sleep, I am astonished by how much he has grown and changed since the time I first began to make his doll.

Relatives, friends, and older siblings also often make toys. I know a seven-year-old girl who made and decorated a set of milk carton blocks for her three-year-old brother’s birthday. She got as much pleasure out of making the blocks as her brother got out of receiving them, and she took great joy in watching him play with something she had created herself.

Given the fast pace of family life today, it’s easy to dismiss homemade toys as a thing of the past, a nostalgic endeavor ill-suited to busy modern lives. But the toys we make for our children and the toys children make for themselves need not be time-consuming.

Many highly satisfying toys, such as drums, whistles, and simple boats, can be constructed in less than half an hour. Projects that take longer, such as dollhouses, stuffed animals, and wagons, can be worked on little by little over a long period of time. Having an ongoing toy project to return to for a short period of time each weekend lends rhythm and continuity to family life.

Many parents and children avoid making toys because they believe they lack the artistic skills necessary to create an appealing plaything. Our culture reveres commercial toys with perfect proportions and highly realistic details. Like folk art, however, most homemade toys are not slick looking. The paint runs on a mask, a doll’s head is sewn on crooked, a cardboard train veers to one side when pushed. However, such imperfections give the toys character and are all part of the creative process. Unlike store-bought toys, many homemade toys never reach a state of completion. They are always being tinkered with and reshaped to accommodate their maker’s new ideas.

Homemade toys are often cheaper than commercial toys, and toys made by children can be combined with commercial toys in ways that are economical and inspirational. For instance, a family could purchase a toy train and track and then encourage their children to make the landscape and accessories, which often cost extra. Having the train may give the children the impetus they need to invent a small world of bridges, hills, lakes, and mountains for the train to pass through. A similar type of creative experience can occur when children are given a store-bought dollhouse and then left to create all the furnishings and dolls themselves.

In short, the store-bought toys that work best with homemade toys don’t come in complete sets. A train without the accessories and a dollhouse without the furniture are suggestive fragments that leave plenty of room for children’s imagination and constructive abilities. When we give children the chance to play with homemade toys, we give them more than just toys. The boy who observes his sister gradually constructing a tree house comes to understand the meaning of patience and careful workmanship. The friends who make a tent out of blankets and chairs intuitively grasp the meaning of self-reliance; they know how to construct their own amusements. The girl who creates an entire airport out of shoe boxes, paper cups, and pipe cleaners learns to value her creativity. Her planes take to the air and fly further than any adult would have foreseen, propelled by her own vision and wisdom.

Some Classic Toys Easily Made at Home

• Dramatic Play: doll, puppet, mask, hat, costume

• Things That Fly and Float: kite, boomerang, plane, boat

• Sounds of All Sorts: drum, rattle, whistle, kazoo

• Dwellings: tent, treehouse, dollhouse and furniture

• Odds and Ends: blocks, yo-yo, Jacob’s ladder, hand loom

For More Information

Caney, Steven. The Toy Book. New York: Workman Publishing, 1972. Written by a designer at the Boston Children’s Museum, all the toys in this classic book are easy to make and fun to play with. Tube telephones, water lenses, clothespin wrestlers, city kite, movie wheel, sundial, button yo-yo. Ages 3 and up.

Caney, Steven. Play Book. New York: Workman Publishing, 1975. As wonder filled and easy to use as The Toy Book. Pinball machine, salt garden, balloon rocket, straw and clip building, boomerang, wild beast whistles. Ages 3 and up.

Cooper, Stephanie, Christine Fynes-Clinton, and Marye Rowling. The Children’s Year. Gloucestershire, United Kingdom: Hawthorn Press, 1986. This book, written by a group of European mothers, links toymaking to the rhythmical cycle of the seasons. Useful for adults who wish to make toys with charm and simplicity for babies and small children. Cloth dolls, knitted animals, baby’s felt ball, jack-in-the-box, Jacob’s ladder, walnut shell boats, climbing gnome.

Hamilton, Leslie. Child’s Play. New York: Crown, 1989. A wide variety of toys and art projects to make with preschoolers. Truck tunnel, spaceship, Play-Doh, telescope, shaker, mapmaking, beanbags. Hamilton has also written a book for older children, Child’s Play. Ages 6 to 12.

Jaffke, Freya. Toymaking with Children. Edinburgh, Scotland: Floris Books, 1988. Inspired by the Waldorf approach to education, this book explains how to make classic toys from natural materials. Building logs, play stands, bark boats, carved wooden figures, dolls, knitted animals.

Roche, Denis. Loo-Loo, Boo, and Art You Can Do. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996. A whimsical dog and her artistic friend present an array of fun things to make. Stinky clay, beads, hats, masks, potato prints, secret messages.

Thomson, John. Natural Childhood. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994. A holistic childcare guide with an excellent chapter on homemade toys, as well as chapters on the role of play and imagination in children’s lives. Mobiles, dolls and dollhouses, puppets, hats, weaving, windmills.

Walker, Lester. Carpentry for Children. Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1985. A complete introduction to beginning carpentry. These are projects kids can make themselves with a minimum of adult assistance. Tugboat, block set, doll cradle, stilts, lemonade stand, coaster car.

Wiseman, Ann Sayre. Making Things: A Handbook of Creative Discovery. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1973, 1975, 1997. It is tempting to describe this wonderful book as a kid’s craft manual, but it’s much more than that. It celebrates the value of learning by doing, at the same time providing easy-to-follow directions for a wide range of projects. Marionettes, box houses, cardboard racing turtles, play fish and pole, climbing pull toys, balancing toys.

For more information about toys, see the following articles in past issues of Mothering: "Classic Toys for Children," no. 81 and "Why I Make My Own Educational Toys," no. 25.

Jennifer Soalt lives in Concord, Massachusetts, with her husband, Charlie, and her sons Toby (3) and Colin (8 months). She is a teacher and freelance writer.