You don’t have to spend a lot of green on cool eco-friendly summer toys. You, along with your kids can make a whole slew of eco-friendly toys all on your own, with low-cost eco-friendly or recycled materials. Following are 20 eco-fun, summer toy projects.

• Really neat rock dominoes (shown above) – one of those I can’t believe I didn’t think of that ideas.
• Make a recycled Cardboard Playhouse like the one shown above from Make Baby Stuff, then break out the non-toxic art supplies and let your little one decorate to her heart’s content.
• If you’ve got some tools and are good with wood you can make a working wooden boom crane that little kids will love.
• Kool-Aid dyed play silks – kids love play silks. You can toss them up, use them as doll clothing, use them for dress up fun, or fly around the yard with them swooshing behind you. You can find inexpensive silks at thrift stores OR silk material which takes a little more work because you’ll have to cut the material and mend them, but no big. If you don’t want to use Kool-aid try dying the silks with some homemade juice dye (made from plants).
• Organic finger paint – not freakishly bright, but non-toxic subtle paints you can make with the kids.
• Flying fun with a super slick recycled cardboard origami hang glider.
• Build a Bubble-Powered Rocket – with recycled paper, TUMS and film canisters. This rocket actually lifts off.
• Nine amazing DIY play kitchens and one totally hip homemade oven!

• Seriously amazing homemade baby blocks (shown above)! Use scrap wood or sustainable wood and non-toxic paint
• Start saving toilet paper tubes now and by mid summer you’ll have enough to build a toilet paper tube playhouse. Use non-toxic glue and duct tape to create your playhouse.
• Excellent collection of old-fashioned, handmade toys from Mother Earth News.
• The Perfect Dollhouse: A homemade miniature villa from Family Fun. It’s a tiny, completely custom, recycled dollhouse box. Tidy enough to slide right under the bed. So creative that it’ll be a hit all summer. The sky is really the limit with this project. You probably have tons of recycled bits around the house that will work for this cool project.
• Toy boats made with recycled blocks.
• Make a butterfly house.
• Future directors will adore making a homemade movie wheel – be sure to use recycled paper.
• 100% awesome recycled cereal box houses.
• For baby fun and learning make a beautiful soft book of colors with fabric scraps.
• Got summer pixies? Make some creative homemade fairy wings that your little one can decorate and fly with all summer long.
• Homemade puppet theater – then add some sock puppets.
• After hours and hours of Zelda, I’m pretty sure my son Cedar would faint dead away if I made him this sweet grappling hook – not for irresponsible kids though.

[images via Martha Stewart]

Review summary: When Tegu blocks first hit the toy market (back in 2009) the small company received a warm welcome from parents looking for eco-friendly toys (good) but couldn’t keep up with demand (not so good). They closed up shop to regroup and the wait list for their blocks grew to 2000+. Now Tegu is back in business. If you’re looking for a unique alternative to the basic wooden block you’ll love Tegu. Not only are their blocks beautiful but they have secret hidden magnets that allow kids to build some crazy cool creations. This toy is really fun and has eco-perks but also has a major con for most families – the price tag.

Product: Tegu Wooden Blocks – Discovery Set from Tegu.

Cost: The Discovery Set is $50 and includes 26 blocks made with Huesito wood in three shapes: Cubes, Long Planks, and Short Planks. The Discovery set made with mahogany wood is $65. A full set of Huesito wood blocks (52 in all) is $90 while a full mahogany set is $125.

About Tegu blocks…

These aren’t just plain old wooden stacking blocks. Tegu blocks do much more due to safely hidden magnetic connections between the blocks. These tiny magnets (you can’t see them) allow kids to create amazing structures that defy gravity and flexes a child’s creative freedom.

Tegu uses a sustainable hardwood called Huesito sourced from Honduras and Central America, to make their blond blocks and also has a limited block run using safely sourced Mahogany. Blocks come in a natural finish that are water-based and non-toxic. Blocks do contain magnets – although after playing with them I seriously doubt a child could ever get to these magnets (they’re VERY embedded – you can’t even see them). However, because of the magnets blocks are only for children ages 3 years and older. Blocks meet stringent safety standards and you can view their CPSIA mandated General Conformity Certifications online (pdf).

Eco-perks of Tegu blocks:

The wood used at Tegu is sourced from small-scale FSC-certified woodcutting cooperatives supported by international NGOs focused on sustainable forestry. Wood suppliers have the requisite legal permits from the Honduran governmental forestry agency (ICF) and oversight from international NGOs (Nepenthes, Rainforest Alliance). Tegu is also currently developing relationships with cooperatives in the Biosfera Rio Platano, Honduras’ largest deciduous forest, who partner with GTZ and Rainforest Alliance.

Tegu also has a recycling program in place. If your Tegu product ever becomes less fun (I doubt it) you can contact Tegu and the company will pay for shipping to take the toy off your hands.

Whenever you purchase a Tegu toy, you have the chance to contribute to a charity of your choice. You can choose to send a Honduran child to school for a day or you can plant a tree. Tegu’s partner, Trees for the Future, facilitates their replanting project.

Tegu was originally launched with two main ideas – to bring safe non-toxic toys to kids and to create a for-profit company in Honduras that can not only create a positive social impact through its business efforts i.e. by creating jobs but also by giving back to the people of Honduras through unique programs such as mentioned in the bullet above.

Tegu is not Fair Trade certified from what I can tell after checking around. Although they do have a Fair Trade statement of sorts. AND they allow anyone to visit their factory, which bodes just as well with me as certification does.

“Tegu treats all its people – from the toy maker in Honduras to the marketing guys in the USA -with respect and dignity. We believe in the intrinsic value of each human life, and we strive for our approach to fully reflect that belief. In Honduras, for instance, we pay a true living wage (much higher than the minimum wage most factories pay production workers), offer unparalleled benefits and maintain exceptional working conditions at our toy factory (health and safety, lighting, ventilation, working hours, etc).

We encourage all of our customers to visit the tropical country of Honduras. While it has its challenges, we are striving to create a small beacon of hope for the Honduran people. We are proud investors in the people and industry of Honduras and want to share it with anyone who’s interested. Please contact Tegu to request a factory tour.”

One downside of Tegu, which Tegu themselves point out – is the magnet sourcing. As noted, “The negative effect on the earth of mining for the materials in our magnets. At this stage, there’s not a whole lot we can do about this impact (mining is mining, never pretty), but we’re working to make sure we source from responsible suppliers who treat their workers well and minimize, themselves, the negative effect mining has on the environment.”

The Tegu experience:

Bella - very excited with the new blocks

What sets Tegu blocks apart are their hidden embedded magnets. Because of said magnets, Tegu Blocks let kids build complex designs and structures that can move, bend and stand up to rough play. Cedar my nine year old and Bella my best friend’s three year old (with supervision) put these blocks to the test.

Right away the kids were utterly delighted with these blocks because they were so surprising. We test a lot of eco-toys and Cedar is not one to be overly thrilled by new items but he loved these blocks. He was surprisingly not limited by having just 26 blocks and managed to build houses, robots, a car and more. He also made a ton of abstract designs just to see if gravity would hold. Most of the time gravity did hold. What Cedar seemed to like best is that these blocks, once configured into a design won’t fall apart. The magnets hold the designs in place.

Cedar's walking robot

Bella the three year old, liked the blocks too, but she more enjoyed stacking them up and trying to pull them apart – she was very enthralled with how they stuck together. The adults in the house found these blocks amusing too and more than once adults built stuff sans any kids around.

Another cool thing about these blocks is that they are packaged in an attractive, easy to recycle box, that’s strong enough to use as a carrying case. Bella, who my son calls, “The little destroyer” didn’t harm the box in the least even though we let her play with it. The box also boasts some fun educational facts for kids to ponder about trees, recycling, Honduras and more.

The price debate:

As Tegu notes, “Handcrafted wooden toys will always cost more than injection molded plastic…  Tegu toys offer a unique combination of quality craftsmanship, luxurious materials, and a wholesome and developmentally beneficial play experience for years to come. It should come as no surprise that you get what you pay for in toys.” I agree to a point. You should expect to pay more for handmade wooden toys. While you can get a very nice (and large) set of sustainable wooden blocks for around $30-$40 they won’t do what these blocks do – i.e. defy gravity and more. So partially the price point for these is set due to their unique qualities.

Also I’m guessing that the higher price is due to issue like fair wages, the charity programs Tegu is involved in and travel costs – since they’re not made in the USA shipping is likely taxing.

Still, that said, I believe in affordable green toys for families and I find it hard to believe that $90 is reasonable for many green families. Would I pay that much? No, but I’d buy the Discovery Set ($50) as a nice gift for a child. These blocks will last years, they’re not full of toxic goop and I’d consider them a safe fun investment.

Overall score:

I can’t in good conscious give this toy a full five points due to the fact that all day long here I talk about ways to save money while going green. The blocks are just too expensive for many families. Also, while I love the idea of what the company is doing in Honduras, I’m a local advocate. So I took off one full point.

Would I still recommend these…? Yes. I like the fact that they’re a safe, non-toxic, long-lasting and most of all fun, toy. My kid testers adored them and do play with them often, so the blocks are an excellent investment. I’d suggest Tegu blocks as a special gift for a holiday or birthday.

See a gallery below of all the cool Tegu designs your kids can make…

Learn more:

• Visit the Tegu website to buy a set of blocks.
• Follow Tegu on Twitter.
• Follow Tegu on Facebook.

See my green product rating system and green product rating criteria or read more green product reviews.

Little Teething Toys from the very cool Little Sapling Toys make great gifts for babies and they even have one design that’s ideal for Valentine’s Day.

All Little Teething Toys, like the Little Heart Teething Toy shown above, are perfect for teething babies to grasp and chew. Each Heart is sanded satin smooth, left unfinished and are sized safe for your baby. This cute little heart arrives ready to give in a USA made cotton drawstring bag with a tag that includes the wood used, a bit about the Little Sapling Toys family business and care instructions.

Little Sapling Toys is an awesome parent run business with plenty of eco-perks…

• Each toy purchases at Little Sapling Toys supports tree planting through Trees for the Future!
• Wood used for toys is either reclaimed or FSC Certified hardwood.
• Local beeswax and organic jojoba oil finishes are used – no toxins. Teethers are unfinished entirely.
• All paper products and packaging used is recycled and recyclable.
• Web hosting for the company is from HostPapa and powered by 100% renewable energy sources.
• The company participate in Idaho Green Power Program to offset business and personal energy usage.

Visit Little Sapling Toys to learn more and see all of their beautiful toys.

Need more baby-friendly, earth-friendly Valentine’s Day gifts? Check out my pal Peggy’s post at Tree Hugging Family.

While you may have eco-friendly toys on the brain for this holiday season, your friends and family may not. Your kids may get scads of plastic, obnoxious packaging, and yes, even possibly toxic toys for the holidays. Additionally, it’s hard to know which toys are eco-friendly and non-toxic. There’s a lot of greenwashing out there. Luckily there’s a lot you can do to keep the holidays safe, fun, and green.

• First of all develop your own green criteria. I have extensive criteria I use when evaluating green products. You can look over my list and adapt it to your needs.
• Next head to HealthyStuff.org. Check out their list of toxic toys. HealthyStuff.org includes test results for over 5,000 products.That said, you can nominate a toy to be tested if you’re curious about it’s toxic (or not toxic) qualities.
• Join the Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families campaign if you want healthy toys year round for your kids.
• Next try to get family and friends on board. Encourage them to buy safe green toys for your child. If you need help explaining why you want a meaningful, less commercial holiday take a look at I’m Dreaming of a Green Christmas.
• Encourage family and friends to give the gift of time rather than material items.

Some family members can be a hard eco sell though. You can ask nicely and they’ll still get your child obnoxious possibly toxic toys. These toys may not be safe so it’s up to you to protect your children. Do the following…

• Always fill out the toy registration cards. If there’s a recall you’ll know. Also sign up to receive information about toy recalls.
• Read the label to make sure the toy is age appropriate and check for broken pieces. I can’t tell you how many time friends or family bought my son toys that were way too old for him. They mean well, but if people don’t have kids, they tend not to consider safety as much as parents.
• One report notes that 63% of thrift stores sell hazardous or recalled items. Used is good because it’s green, but be careful, and always check with cpsc or the manufacturer to make sure a thrift store toy hasn’t been recalled before you allow your child to use it.

Stay up to date with current toy news at:

• Leadsafe
• W.A.T.C.H
• Toy Industry Association
• Consumers Union