Large take-out coffee cup in hand, Lisa Mahar surveys her New York City store, Kid O. Up since the crack of dawn, she has already played with her 12-month-old twins, Miles and Eli, and walked her 4-year-old, Emmett, to preschool. Then she blasted into the store to keep an eye on what customers are gravitating to. "This place is my lab," she says.
It's also the center of an expanding Kid O universe. Shortly after giving birth to Emmett, Mahar, an architect, made the switch from designing clients' stores to running one of her own. To stock it, she gathered together the simple, finely crafted toys prescribed by such early-childhood experts as Maria Montessori, founder of the Montessori schools; some midcentury-modern children's furniture; and an assortment of books and art supplies. She arranged everything in an impeccable yet unfussy West Village space, where low counters allow the under-3 set to grab and play with the wooden puzzles, animals, and blocks as they please.
But the 41-year-old maintains that the look of her wares is secondary to what they teach. "It's all about stimulating children," says Mahar, who feels a lot of toys confuse by trying to do too many things at once. One of her favorite playthings, and an example of her less-is-more philosophy, is the Montessori Pink Tower, a collection of solid-colored cubes in graduated sizes. "Because the color and shape remain constant, the child can comprehend the changes in scale," she says. Mahar is also developing a line of Kid O products, starting with building blocks that teach grasping and spatial skills.
Of course, you can take the girl out of the architecture firm, but you can't take the architecture firm out of the girl. Her larger interest these days is how entire environments, rather than just individual toys, can engage kids: She recently began offering consultations to parents who need help designing a child's room or making other living spaces more enriching for kids, and she is planning a how-to book on the subject.
Next Page: "I believe in giving kids tools that really work."
