Last week, I found the most amazing toys in a religious run shop, Nikolai-Eck, at Nikolaikirchhof in Leipzig (if you’re in the area, definitely pay it a visit). I’ll post about them over the next few days. First up is Janoschik Toys (German site, English site).

These are seriously cute wooden toys in the shapes of animals, like the ride on scooters above and the coin banks below. Aren’t those owls just precious?

The toys are hand made of European wood in Germany and seemed substantial and of very nice quality when I examined them in the store. I also think that my photos somehow turned out to represent the actual cuteness of the toys better than the photos on the Janoschik website, and they were even cuter in person (was seriously difficult not walking out of the store with one of those mouse scooters).

The scooters and coin banks are available from Holzfarm.de (site in German) and the scooters only from Artedona.de (English and German). Artedona ships worldwide.

You may also be interested in reading:

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Struggling with what to get for that budding engineer in your life? Check out the Moov 4-in-1 vehicle kit. It’s not cheap, at 250 Euro, but if your kid gets bored of their scooter, just take it apart and make a trike. Trike not good enough? Go for a racer. Racer ain’t quite fast enough, let them build themselves a carver. Those four plans come with the 220 piece kit, but for the super-creative kids out there, the possibilities are endless. What a great idea to stimulate the imagination and encourage outdoor play!

Moov is produced by the Dutch company Berg Toys. The Moov vehicle kit is recommended for kids between the ages of 5 and 12.

You may also be interested in reading:

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