How to Make Homemade Toys

In How to Make Homemade Toys: Wooden toys, Cardboard toys, Mechanical toys & Electrical toys, the author has brought together a large number of the toy ideas from his former handicraft volumes, and from his articles published in the Ladies' Home Journal, Woman's Home Companion, Good Housekeeping, the Boys' Magazine, and other publications.

One splendid thing about these homemade toys is that the greater part of them require little more than the pick-up material found at home. Few kids are given hundreds of dollars of assortment of toys at a time, yet anyone can own a collection of this value who is willing to spend the time necessary to follow the instructions given in this book.

Homemade toys are generally longer lived than store toys because the child who expends a certain amount of effort producing gives them better care. Homemade toys also have a greater value than bought ones because there is as much fun making them as playing with them. Doing something interesting, getting satisfying results out of the work, putting an idea into tangible form, and having a toy to show of which it can be said, "I made this all myself," --- these are the factors in toy-making so fascinating to children.

It is no less a child's nature to want to do that which is most pleasing to him or her, than an adult's, so why not encourage this wholesome activity of toy-making to which the child takes as readily as a duck takes to water? It trains the mind to think clearly, the hands to work cleverly, replaces destructive thoughts with constructive ideas, and, in making the boy or girl dependent upon himself or herself for toys, is invaluable in developing resourcefulness.

Recognizing how easily the child's interest is attracted and held by anything of a building nature, toy manufacturers have placed scores of so-called" construction sets" upon the market, but, though excellent as these outfits are, the toys they form are merely assembled, not really made by the kid, and much of the value of making is lost. Exactly as good models as those assembled with" construction sets" can be made of pick-up materials, as chapters in this book show. In fact, some of the models in the manufacturers' instruction pamphlets, such as Merry-go-rounds, Ferris wheels and swings, are almost identical with homemade models devised long ago by the author for his readers. Furthermore, there are many, very many toys in How to Make Homemade Toys which are beyond the limited possibilities of "construction sets."

Originally published in the 1910s, this classic book is also a great reference for the toymakers in small business or home-based business.

Contents Covered:

• Homemade Windmills
• Homemade Kites
• A Homemade Model Airplane
• A Homemade Toy Motorboat
• Homemade Toy Water-Motors
• A Homemade Toy Railway
• Homemade Toy Elevators
• Homemade Mechanical Toys
• Homemade Tops
• Homemade Clockwork Toys
• Homemade Electrical Toys
• A Homemade Toy Shooting Gallery
• A Homemade Doll House and its Furnishing
• A Homemade Toy Stable
• A Homemade Doll Apartment Building and its Decorating
• Homemade Doll Furniture and Other Cigar-Box Furniture
• Homemade Cigar-Box Toys
• Homemade Spool and Cardboard Toys
• A Homemade Toy Mailbox
• A Homemade Reflectoscope