Talk:Wooden toy train
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 | Toys Start‑class Low‑importance | ||||||||||||||||
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Some Manufacturer Homepages for easier reference
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--T.woelk (talk) 19:37, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
Play psychology and educational benefit
Having started the article with more interest in the history, track geometry and design variations, I recently wondered, while playing with my brother and his toddler son, why it is so much fun - for all three of us - to play with the trains.
Somewere I read (yes I will list more Skaneateles sources soon) that Mr. Larabee's wife advised him to make toys toddlers can grip and lift. This might be an interesting basic design issue. The vario system in part claims to be used among other things so connecting the track pieces is easy for untrained hands. I myself remember I loved the "feel" of the unpainted track pieces as a child, though I rather marvelled at the brightly painted trains when looking at them. Discussing with my brother we concluded maybe this is some basic way of remote control - I pull or push here and something I dont directly touch moves in ways I planned. There seems to be a basic joy in anticipating something to happen. Poke a toddler on the belly once and he might react frightened, poke him twice and he gets puzzled. Poke him a third time and he will giggle or at least smile knowing what will happen and awaiting things to happen the way he just memorized. This effect is used to explain why small kids love to drop things over and over again - is there a specific expression for this? The fun of remote control in itself seems not to be fixed to a spezific age, though males seem to enjoy it more than females.
Reading the patent descriptions the inventors often state the educational value of the toy system. Is there some theory published on this? Something like the ideas from Fröbel for designing wooden building blocks (Froebel Gifts)? It is very interesting watching children not familiar with the track system playing with wooden tracks for the first time. The insights to geometry seem to come rather late or seldom though, if not tought, as most children move or are moved to other toys too soon to fully grasp the track geometry. Any Information on this?
Any copyright free pictures of early examples anybody? --T.woelk 12:42, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Other related pictures
These are pictures I found on commons or other language wikipedias.
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by T.woelk (talk • contribs) 17:24, 4 March 2007 (UTC).