New Under 5s Toy Library at Highgate Library, Chester Road N19
After lockdowns and restrictions left young children and their parents and carers without indoor spaces to visit for so long, Highgate Library, N19 are pleased to announce they have recently launched a brand new Under 5s Toy Library. Set up by The Friends of Highgate Library Charitable Foundation, with a grant from Camden’s Community Infrastructure Levy, they offer a wide range of interesting and colourful toys for babies, toddlers and pre-schoolers, and are currently the only active Toy Library in The London Borough of Camden.
Environmentally friendly and aiming to increase access to good quality toys for everyone in the community and beyond, the Toy Library can help to reduce clutter and allow families and carers to try out lots of different toys. Toys include tactile baby toys, magnetic tiles, dolls, colourful wooden toys, ‘monster’ trucks, board games, puzzles, toy musical instruments and more. Toys can be borrowed with an ordinary library card free of charge. Joining the library takes five minutes and if you’re not yet a member all you need is to bring along proof of address and some ID.
The Toy Library has just introduced several additional toys including duplicates of favourites such as the classic vintage style Fisher Price ‘Chatter Phone’, a Magnatab ‘letter board’ – a fun way for children to try ‘writing’ by tracing magnetic letters, and a wooden birthday cake with removable candles which children can ‘slice’ themselves. The Library is a seven minute walk from Archway and has a play space that has recently been reopened after over two years of being out of bounds due to the pandemic.
The library also have an air purifier to help ventilate the space and a lovely range of books for babies, children, adolescents and adults. Children and their families and carers are warmly welcomed, come and see what they have on offer! Find them at Highgate Library, Chester Road, N19 5DH.
Highgate Library is one of London Borough of Camden’s nine public libraries, but since 2015 it has been jointly managed by LB Camden and the Friends of Highgate Library, and run by a member of Camden library staff and a team of volunteers.
The Under 5s Toy Library runs on Thursday mornings, term time from 10.00 – 11.30am.
What Toy Library users have said:
“I come every week with the children I child-mind, they love the friendly atmosphere, colourful and unusual toys and it’s great that I can provide variation and interesting toys for the children I care for without extra expense” Local Child-minder, Archway.
“My son loves coming to the Toy Library. Returning toys and choosing something new is part of the fun and it’s lovely to meet other children there to share the joy. The magnetic toys are his current favourite” Father of a 3 year old.
“In the age of waste it’s refreshing to see this sort of thing, and as I’m on a low income it’s really helpful to be able to regularly borrow such lovely toys” Mother of an 11 month old.