green-toys

Green Halloween Non-Edible Treats for 50¢ or Less

October 3, 2010

The other day we looked at edible green Halloween treats. If you don’t want to hand out candy there are some affordable options you can choose from. A word about baggies. If you go with non-edible Halloween treats, it’s way cheaper to buy in bulk and divvy items up. Some items don’t require baggies, but [...]

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Natural Hardwood Ramp Blocks ‘Wedges’ for Eco-Friendly Toy Cars

August 3, 2010

As the eco-minded mama of a little boy, you know what’s annoying? All those plastic pieces of car tracks and ramps around the house! Five years ago when my son was still REALLY into hot wheels it was hard to find anything but plastic ramps. Sure, we’d make homemade ramps with recycled goods, but a [...]

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Parents need to avoid commercialism along with kids

July 13, 2010

It’s true that we live in a super hyper commercial culture. It’s also true (IMO) that commercialism makes it more difficult to raise green kids. BUT not impossible. As I noted previously, many health and child-advocacy organizations feel that we should avoid commercialism at all costs. Turn the TV off, skip junk food, never buy [...]

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Commercialism Makes Growing Green Kids Harder

July 12, 2010

One of the hardest things about raising green kids is that we live in an increasingly commercial culture. Some problems related to eco-friendly living and our current culture include: Excess stuff is not eco-friendly but excess stuff is pushed in our culture. It’s very hard to impress eco-friendly living skills upon kids when all they [...]

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Amazing Eco-Friendly Felt Food Fun for Kids

July 5, 2010

Felt food pretty much rocks. It’s safe for little ones, easy to handle and play with and a lot of felt is eco-friendly to boot. Felt food makes a great addition to your child’s play kitchen. Below are some great places to pick up eco-friendly felt food. Twinkle Kids handcrafts all products from the finest [...]

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Winner of the KidsCraft Playhouse!

June 8, 2010

Ok folks I’ve got the winner rounded up for our current giveaway. Just to recap, the winner of this cool KidsCraft summer giveaway will win a KidsCraft Playhouse of their choice. We recently reviewed the rocket ship but we’re guessing the play cottage will be super fun too. I put all the comment numbers in [...]

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What’s on your green wish list?

June 7, 2010

There are a lot of things I wish were different about eco-friendly living. For example, less greenwashing, better more standard eco-labeling, MUCH better organic food certification, more independent eco-friendly companies (i.e. not owned by a big corp.), better green product reviews (as the norm) for consumers and soooooo much more. However, all of the above [...]

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Green Toy Review: The Shuttle Imagination Cardboard Rocket by KidsCraft

June 6, 2010

Review summary: This fun cardboard playhouse is semi-easy to build, even without instructions, is bigger than you’d expect and appears to be well made and long lasting for a cardboard toy. Also, we’re near the end of our KidsCraft Playhouse giveaway here at Growing a Green Family so enter today. Product: The Shuttle Imagination made [...]

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Homemade non-toxic organic finger paint

June 5, 2010

The other day we looked at homemade tea and plant dyes you and the kids can make from gathered nature items. Today, paint you can make with your dye. These paints are perfectly non-toxic and safe as finger paints for small children. However, I’ve seen parents complain that these aren’t bright enough. The dye you [...]

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Green Toy Review: Tegu Magnetic Wooden Blocks

May 28, 2010

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 [...]