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Design For Today   1   1933  Page: 290
 
 The Child's World: Psychology in Toys and Games
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Sutnar, Ladislav [1897-1976. Czechoslovakia/USA. Graphic/Exhibition Designer/Typographer/Painter/Glass Artist]
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CZECHOSLOVAKIAN TOYS Designed by Professor Suttnar [Ladislav Sutnar]
Design For Today   1   1933  Page: 291
 
 The Child's World: Psychology in Toys and Games
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Vogue Studios
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THE CHILD’S WORLD

PSYCHOLOGY IN TOYS AND GAMES

By Paul Abbatt
(Formerly of Forest School, Godshill, Hants)

The child’s play-world is, in little, the adult world of reality. Playing, he learns how to deal with the problems that will arise in later life. Hence the importance of his first toys, their design and function.

Yet until the study of child psychology opened the eyes of parents and teachers, the question of fitness for purpose in toys was scarcely considered. In a simple age little girls were given dolls and dolls’ houses, small boys soldiers and forts; and because such toys were really reflections of the grown-up life to come, it may be presumed that they adequately fulfilled their purpose of preparation. And indeed a glance round the museums will show that children’s toys of the past unconsciously provided that education through experience that we must now acquire consciously. Ball games taught skill of hand and eye, toy animals (usually wooden in England, sometimes birch-bark in Sweden, and in Germany occasionally of beautifully blown glass), dolls and dolls’ houses provided a link with reality and material for imaginative play. Yet these museum toys, often exquisite works of art in themselves, must have been toys to look at rather than touch. The lovely little dolls’ houses of the eighteenth century were full of exquisite detail to be appreciated with a sophisticated eye rather than an enquiring hand, and the glass figurines of Bavaria would certainly not stand the rough-and-tumble of a nursery game. Hence it is further back in time, to the wooden animal toys of Egypt (crocodiles with movable jaws!) and the lumps of wood that were Coptic dolls, that we must look to find parallels for modern toy design.

In a period when toys and nursery design are mostly comic or sentimental, and the object of games to induce a state of excitement, we are beginning to realise that in providing opportunity for play we can do more than merely amuse. A child can get more out of playing than “fun.” He can also learn a great deal, much that can scarcely be taught in the schoolroom. Indeed, in cases where outward circumstances deny children the right ways of playing, their mental development may be seriously retarded. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, for instance, little children used to be given tasks of knitting, spinning and weaving to occupy them for the whole day, with the idea that they should not become work-shy members of society but practise hard work from the earliest years. We are now beginning to realise that it is the child who has had plenty of opportunity for play who will later work with better will and efficiency: and we are concerned that all children, even the poorest, shall be provided with a rich and happy playtime.
In play, actions are done for their own sake, for


NOTE ON PHOTOGRAPH. — Wooden animals, strong and well made, can be given to the child of one year on for putting up, knocking down again and carrying about, and he will so gain experience in grasping and arm movement. Later, at nursery school age, they can be used with bricks to make farms and jungles, an endless variety of little worlds. The size of the animals, which are designed by Skinner, eliminates “fiddley" operations and makes creative play possible.
Design For Today   1   1933  Page: 292
 
 The Child's World: Psychology in Toys and Games
Footnotes:
A child's pastry making set. By courtesy of Heal & Son Ltd.

A climbing frame not only develops children physically but benefits them psychologically by making a sense of fear unknown. This one consists of a climbing tower for the most adventurous: a section with climbing ropes: and a platform under which children find a “den." while on top of it they hoist bricks and sand and become architects. Photo by “Lisa”
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the love of doing, and are backed up by the whole force and drive of the child’s character and intelligence. Here is a force which can be used for development and valuable experience, a force which, if it is not thwarted by a wrong choice of playthings, develops into the power behind the successful architect or engineer.
It may sound a commonplace to say that the child should be assured of his playtime. Yet analyses of the child’s day at home or in institutions go to show that too much care and attention to the child’s physical needs often leave an insufficient minimum of playtime. When a baby is two months old it plays for about nine minutes a day; at three months the time has already increased to an average of forty-five minutes; at one year to seven hours and three-quarters. And the daily playtime of the child between two and six remains constant at between eight and nine hours. It is a big slice of life: we can see at once that play and playthings are just as necessary for the child as food and clothes.

For satisfying play, the right material is required. It is true that children like to play with things that are not strictly speaking toys—brushes and dusters, the table under which a house is made, the bit of wood that becomes a doll. But to say that toys are unnecessary would be a false conclusion. There are toys which children must have which they cannot find for themselves. In an examination of 100 poor children it was found that eighty-five had found some kind of building material—stones, bits of wood, broken pots; seventy-seven possessed some kind of doll, whether a rolled-up duster or a bit of wood; but very few (only nineteen) had found anything by way of a picture book. Any teacher who has experience of neglected children will have observed their hunger for pictures and bright colours.

The younger the child the more necessary—and unusual—it is for him to have the right toys. Restless turning from one toy to another is a sign of either too many or unsuitable toys. Probably, in such a case, simpler toys are needed. And we must view the materials required from the standpoint of the child and not from that of the adult. For instance, the problem whether the child should occasionally be allowed to make a frightful noise in his play will be solved very differently from the standpoint of the child, who takes pleasure in such a racket, and from the standpoint of the grown-up, who has to bear it. Such problems are by no means infrequent, for much of children’s play is disturbing to adults. The only way is to look at the situation as objectively as possible, and where it can be managed arrange for the children to spend a good deal of their time actively out of doors, where noise will not disturb. It is a good plan to provide, as well as gardening tools, some sort of apparatus where children’s active and adventurous interests may find an outlet. The illustration shows a climbing frame which has been designed to combine safety with the maximum of interest and variety—a climbing tower, a platform and a space for bars and rope ladders. Here the child learns gradually how to use his muscles, perfects the large movements of leg and arm and overcomes any tendency to physical fear.
Design For Today   1   1933  Page: 293
 
 The Child's World: Psychology in Toys and Games
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Here are modern fitting toys for children from one year old. The Train in the foreground is of notably good design, entirely of wood with solid easy couplings, cellulosed in gay colours. Behind it is another simple wooden Train which the child fits together by means of pegs. The graduated coloured rings of the Pyramids form an exercise in observation, for the child, after several attempts, will succeed in threading them in the right order upon upright pegs. Next is a Posting Box, for “posting” wooden shapes into their appropriate holes. The many uses to which a Nest of Boxes may be put have been described in the article: these are of painted plywood, light and strong. The Six-Peg Block provides practice in matching colours and fitting pegs into holes. The little Trolley in the foreground combines pulling and fitting, for it is “loaded” with blocks of wood which slip over pegs which in turn fit into the trolley. Vogue Studios

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For wet days, toys must be devised which will provide activity within doors. Here an indoor sand-tray (see page 296) is useful; and later, from five years on, a carpenter’s bench and real small tools will be an inexhaustible source of pleasure and experience. Hammering toys which will form an outlet for destructive urges and the need to make a noise must also be provided, such as the hammer-pegs, which consist of bright coloured wooden pegs to be hammered through a wooden frame; and nail mosaic, a designing game which includes the use of a hammer. The child seems to have various destructive tendencies: first, the destructiveness of quite tiny children, which is normal in their development and can hardly be called destructiveness. The child who knocks down the tower he has built hardly realises that what he has destroyed was something in itself. A second form of destructiveness has its origin in the child’s thirst for knowledge. He destroys a toy to see how it works. Therefore give mechanical toys that can be taken to pieces and put together again. The child who destroys for the sake of destroying needs to be carefully dealt with. This is best done not by taking away all breakable things, but by systematically giving the child something to do which necessitates care, such as pouring out his own milk and washing his own plate and cup. How durable a toy must be depends upon the child who is to use it. The toy offers to the child certain opportunities of experience: it must be strong enough to withstand the uses to which it is put. The older the child the more delicate the material you can put in his hands. While you give a child of eighteen months an unbreakable dish, the child of three and four years should have one of china.

Toys must be suited to the size and power of the child, for the educational value of the toy is dependent on his acquiring skill in its use. The small child learns to estimate his strength, gains confidence in heaving and dragging wooden blocks about, for example. And there is a special
Design For Today   1   1933  Page: 294
 
 The Child's World: Psychology in Toys and Games
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The wagon load of bricks known as Bagoblox are diversely and gaily shaped and coloured: they provide stimulus for the imagination — to the two-year-old the simplest upright brick may take the form of a man. The windmill in the box was made from coloured wooden shapes which the child himself nails on to a composition mat. The hammering involved gives an added zest to the making of simple designs. First building bricks for the one-year-old have the advantage of quickly looking like something: they are of unpainted hardwood, in big cubes, diagonals and slats. The wooden constructional toy [centre') has the advantage over metal toys of the same kind in that it has no nuts or bolts and is pleasantly coloured. Hammer-pegs give an outlet for the natural desire for hammering, and also give good practice in hitting the peg on the head. They are coloured wooden pegs, to be hammered back and through holes in a strong wooden stand, and are cut so as to fit the holes tightly in spite of frequent banging. On the right are two constructional toys which make figures of birds and little men, to be fitted together by means of pegs and grooves. Vogue Studios

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attraction in the things which are suited to the size of the child: a table, a chair, a wagon in which he can sit, a playhouse big enough for him to sit in.

A child often tires of a toy, not because he has played with it too much, but because he has grown too old for it. Play with a too easy toy is boring. Play with a too difficult toy is impossible. An eighteen months child may be given a train on lines. He wants to kick and throw it about like a ball. His indignant father says the child must only watch, with the result that father is left to play with the train while the child repairs to the kitchen where he plays with pots and pans. These he can move: a wooden train with no wheels and solid, easy couplings he can also move. But the chief danger in giving too complicated toys is that the grown-up teaches a child how to play. A further danger is that when the child should be really ready for them, he will not want them. It is no uncommon thing for parents to buy their children the toys which they themselves find attractive.

Toys should give the child the opportunity to acquire different powers: hence it follows that the most valuable toys are those which are capable of being used as often and in as many different ways as possible. If bricks are given, choose plain bricks. Only as an auxiliary, or where the child shows special interest, give bricks to be built into little men or trains, or houses with windows. The illustration of a model village shows what can be done by intelligent children with plain blocks and boards, with the addition of a few small wooden toys and some twigs from the garden.

The doll which gives most pleasure is the simplest, as the child can invest it with a personality untrammelled by what the object really looks like. Raw materials, such as plasticine, black-boards, sand, are all things which can be used again and again.

Toys must be of good design and pleasing colour. But the child’s aesthetic values are different from the adult’s. The little child needs bright, primary
Design For Today   1   1933  Page: 295
 
 The Child's World: Psychology in Toys and Games
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colours, and at the beginning of school age the pictures or toy must be realistic: a doll’s house must have modern furniture, an aeroplane must be a modern model.
The baby’s first toys will be rattles, involving grasping and arm movements; or simple animals made of big wooden beads, which will give experience of form and colour. When he begins to walk about a toy to pull or push will give pleasure, especially if there is some mechanical effect, as in an animal with a moving mouth or little bells which ring. In the child’s third or fourth year he may be given a wagon which carries a real load and which he can fill or empty.

One of the best examples of a very simple toy that has a great many different possibilities is the nest of boxes. It is suitable to give a child when it is no older than nine months, and the child goes on discovering new possibilities until it is two years old. Some of these possibilities are: (i) simply to move the boxes about; (2) to knock them against things; (3) to make a noise by banging them together; (4) to put them inside one another, at first not in consecutive order; (5) to stand them in a row; (6) to build a tower; (7) to hide the little ones in the big ones; (8) to fill them with other toys; (9) to empty things from one into another. To stand daily wear for many months these boxes must be of really stout wood, well fastened together, and the colour must not come off. It must be painted on to the wood, as painted paper merely peels.

Among other types of material to be considered in choosing toys for little children are fitting toys: such as the posting box and nest of boxes already mentioned for the under three year old and, in the third and fourth year, the kind of apparatus used at the Margaret McMillan Nursery School, such as a sorting board and box of shapes, for giving experience of form. A sorting board and box of shapes are shown in the illustration. Very simple jig-saw puzzles and picture trays are other fitting toys for three years and over. Another example of a simple toy with many possibilities is the box of bricks. In its second year the child is best suited by bricks which are coloured and which can easily be packed away in a bag (Bagoblox: see illustration). They need not offer possibilities for elaborate construction beyond the child’s capacity, but they must attract by their variety of shape and colour. At this age the simplest upright brick satisfies the child that it is a man, a house, or a tree. A Posting-box (see illustration) teaches variety of form to the eighteen months child. From about two years old he may be given first building bricks (see illustration) whose chief feature is that they will not fall over. Two inch cubes, some cut diagonally, with long slats, can be built by quite a small child into fine edifices of easy stability (see the church in the illustration).

When four years old the child will busily work with constructional toys, making carts, horses and people by sticking rods into holes or slats into grooves (see illustration on opposite page of Matador and Peg and Flat Mosaic). At first the child will use these without any definite plan and produce a complicated network without any meaning or significance. But later on he will consciously set out at the beginning of his play to produce a real object.

From five years on the child may be given a more ambitious box of bricks, for now he will not be discouraged by the quantity of material put before him. Indeed, in setting out to build a zoo or a railway station he will require more bricks than at first seems likely, and it is as well for him if the material is adequate to his creative energy. This is the age when simple crafts such as braidweaving may be undertaken, if the apparatus does not involve very delicate adjustments. Accuracy of arm movement comes with large-scale handling of paints and crayons: here an easel (see illustration) is useful, for the child will not at first be able to attain the fine movements of hand and wrist needed.

It will be seen that the choosing of toys is an important matter and one better not left to chance. The wise parent will make a Five Year Plan that will include fitting and matching toys, constructional toys, crayoning and painting, a carpenter’s bench and tools, modelling and simple weaving. And side by side with making things will develop the active physical life of the child: nursery graspings and bangings, play with sandpit and gardening tools, games and gymnastics on a climbing frame.

Among those who have recorded their experimental work with children at play, I am especially indebted to Herr Hetzer, author of Richtiges Spiel- zeugfiir jedes Alter (Dresden: Verlag kleine Kinder).

Other books for parents who are interested in their children’s development through play are:

Harriet Johnson. Children in the Nursery
School (Allen and Unwin, 15s.).
Susan Isaacs. The Nursery Years (Routledge, 1s.); Intellectual Growth in Young Children (Routledge, 15s.).
Slight. Living with our Children (Grant Educational Co., 3s. 6d.).
Garrison. Permanent Play Materials for Young Children (Scribners).
Design For Today   1   1933  Page: 296
 
 The Child's World: Psychology in Toys and Games
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THE PLAY AGES OF CHILDHOOD

A simple toy to which a child can be put from the age of 18 months. The posting box has in its lid, holes which correspond to the shapes of cylinders, squares, etc. It teaches the child recognition of shapes and accuracy of hand and eye.
How terribly easily jig-saws fall to pieces! These new designs are wooden pictures of animals cut into a few easy pieces to be fitted into a recessed outline in the base of the tray, so that they can be securely fitted together and carried about when finished.

An indoor sand tray, on a table just the right height for three- and four- year-olds, has the advantage of being available on wet days and also for play with bricks and other toys which as a rule belong indoors. Sand moulds and little boats add possibilities to piemaking and modelling.
Design For Today   1   1933  Page: 297
 
 The Child's World: Psychology in Toys and Games
Profiles: click on name to see profile
 
Abbatt, Marjorie (Cobb, Norah Marjorie) [1899-1991. UK. Toy Designer]
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Drawing and painting are among the earliest joys of childhood: why is it that most paintbooks and boxes are so small? Skill of hand and wrist is developed later than the large movements of the arm, which are allowed for in this double easel and capacious paint box with really big palettes and lots of paint.

Fine big beechwood blocks and plywood boards will make almost anything: these were made according to H. G. Wells’ specifications in his book Floor Games.

From four years old a child will be proud to be the possessor of a real little carpenter’s bench on which he can hammer and file pieces of wood. From six years old he can handle with skill and safety the commoner carpenter’s tools, if made small enough and adapted to his degree of control.

Photographs by “Lisa" reproduced by courtesy of Paul and Marjorie Abbatt