Our Story
“Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.”
~ E.B. White
Since 2004, Honeybee Toys have been supplying Australian families with the very best handcrafted wooden and natural toys for imagination, wonder and joy!
We believe that childhood is a magical time to be honoured and nourished. Our selection of toys, curated for over 16 years with some of the world’s best toy makers, is inspired by Waldorf Education and designed to nurture the imagination and the whole child.
We choose our toys with the greatest of care while looking through the eyes of a child from the moment of birth and right through to school age and beyond. Our toys are holistic, sustainable and made with natural materials.
Heirloom wooden toys, family games, charming books, natural art materials, musical instruments that delight the ear, puzzles that challenge, beautiful resources for supporting homeschooling and family celebrations – we cherish our role of assisting your little one through the journey of childhood.
Core Values
We base our carefully curated selection of toys on 3 core values:
Nourishing Imagination
All our toys are open-ended, allowing children to imagine for themselves.
Caring for our Earth
Our toys are made from sustainable and natural materials – good for the Earth and good for your child.
Caring for People
Our toys are made with love by real craftspeople and only employ people being paid an ethical wage.
A family business…
Honeybee has from it’s very birth been a family businesses, and is still owned and operated by us, the founders, Melissa and Brendan.
When our first child was born in 1998, we became aware that it was almost impossible to buy beautiful, open-ended wooden toys in Australia. It soon became our dream, not only to source wooden toys for our own children, but to make them available for like-minded families in Australia. And so the Honeybee Toys vision was born.
We researched and discovered some of the world’s finest toy makers, many of which were also small family businesses, passionate about their craft and providing nourishing play things for a simplified childhood. We found inspiration from the Steiner education our children attended, and our belief that all children should be allowed to grow, flourish and be free to play and discover for themselves.
We love our work! We now supply hundreds of toy stores throughout Australia with sustainable, beautifully crafted toys, as well as having our own “bricks and mortar” store in Melbourne where you can visit and experience the magic of childhood for yourself!