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It smells like wood. That warm aroma – that presence – is the first thing you notice when crossing the threshold of entering the premises. Then comes childish imagery: tricycles, houses, puzzles, kaleidoscopes, horses, dogs and even more diverse and multicolored fauna.
It is a Friday morning in Tesín Tesán, a toy store located in the city of Mar del Plata (Argentina), which became famous throughout the country for selling products without batteries or plastics. Instead, they offer items made of metal, paper, cardboard, fabric and, of course, wood. Toys are accessible and visible to their main users: children.
“Better game” is the slogan of the company, which has two locations in the city and ships throughout the country. What began as the concern of a mother and grandmother ended up being a business, which also provides a marketing channel to the country's toy artisans.
“The toy store came to me as a grandmother. When my eldest daughter, who is now my partner, was pregnant with my first grandchild, we started studying childcare. From that look at childhood, we begin to think about how to educate and how to raise. We talk about respected childhoods and we also focus on respected play. I am referring to interpellation and non-directed or intervening play for a child. When we opened, six years ago, there was no proposal of this type,” says Sandra Sajnin, a childcare worker, one of the owners of Tesín Tesán and with a past as an executive in the commercial area in the media.
Sajnin talks about the ideas of free movement, respectful play, and the motor and cognitive development of children. In short: the game as a serious thing. “We began to think as childcare workers rather than as toymakers. In addition to the idea of generating less plastic, we wanted to offer warmer, nobler and more pleasant to the touch materials. We also think that they are perishable for the planet. When you throw away a piece of plastic you have to apologize to the future for what you are doing. Wooden toys also break, just like any other toy. But, if it happens, you give it a kiss and throw it to the ground, which will know what to do with it. If you give a boy a plastic block and a wooden one, he will most likely choose the wood for the consistency, volume and warmth of the product,” she points out.
In its branches and through its website, Tesín Tesán offers more than two thousand products, which are carefully chosen by its owners, beyond the cutting of objects without plastic or batteries as an identity of the brand. They even designed some toys, such as a push-walk car with 23 assorted colored blocks, which is a bestseller.
“We look for original proposals, from design and innovation to bring children and people of all ages closer. There is also a search from aesthetics, taste and color palettes. It is not easy to fill a toy store avoiding plastics. Or, at least, seeking to reduce its use as much as possible. “Why do I need a toy to come wrapped in nylon?” asks Inés Varela, a childcare worker, Galo's mother and Sajnin's daughter and partner in the toy store that took its name from a fragment of a children's song.
She makes a difference between toys made with materials that come directly from nature and offer a sensory experience, such as wood, and those in which it is necessary to “press a button for things to happen.” “They are materials – wood is not the only one – that are not aggressive to the senses; They allow an approach that is in the hands of the boy and the girl and that is in their time. They are toys designed for those hands and bodies. There is cause-effect learning. They are a door to the real world that they will later find. They are not the toys where I press a button and a lot of things happen. Our proposal comes to coexist and expand the others,” says Varela, who before having the toy store she was dedicated to audiovisual and concert production. Sajnin adds: “We also don't rate toys by gender or age because kids mature in different ways. We do it perhaps out of interest and tendency. What is the boy exploring? What does the family feel they should encourage?”
The proposal goes far beyond the sale of toys and a sales channel for artisanal manufacturers. Carolina Mora, a psychologist with training in perinatal and early childhood psychology, talks about the importance of stimulating the ability of babies, boys and girls to interact with their environment in a creative way.
“We are all born with the ability to interact with the environment and objects in a playful way. Sometimes we think – and the industry collaborates with that thought – that more is better. I mean more objects, more expensive and with more functionalities, such as sounds, noises and buttons. They sell us the idea that these types of objects are the best for early childhood. Development and education studies show that the more 'it does' and the more specificities the object has, the less it will stimulate the new connections and playful forms of the baby and the child,” points out the specialist.
A cloth, a piece of wood, a simple spoon… These small objects, which we find in our homes, can be much more stimulating than the most modern toy, full of lights and noise, according to Mora. “Very simple things can be extremely stimulating for the imagination, creativity and experience of sensory discovery. That baby, boy or girl can take the time to discover the object and invent different uses and functions for it. Being by her side during that exploration is the way we accompany the learning.”
When evening falls in Mar del Plata and the vacationers leave the beach, Sandra Sajnin prepares everything to close the doors of the toy store until the next day. She remembers that she studied childcare because she wanted to be a “grandmother with a degree.” When asked how to combat screens, she doesn't talk about wooden or plastic toys. She seems concerned about the new generations raised on screens from her earliest childhood.
“I'm a fan of kids eating a good bite from time to time because it's creative. Then, they have to invent something to 'get bored'. I feel so sorry when I see a two-year-old in the stroller looking at a screen. That is extremely harmful to his cognitive development. Outside there is a sky, trees, the noise of the car that passed by and a man on a bicycle. How can it be that we make them watch a screen while he sits there? A child should be amazed by the world when he goes out into the street!”
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