Knoxville mom creates Toys with a Purpose, teaching children kindness

by: Lori Tucker

Posted: Jul 29, 2023 / 08:25 AM EDT

Updated: Jul 29, 2023 / 08:25 AM EDT

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — A Knoxville mom has won Mom’s Choice Awards and Kids Product of the Year from Creative Magazine for toys she created.

They’re part of the Toys with a Purpose line. The plush toys, like “Bene Bear,” are designed to teach character traits to children like Jonas and Connor Cline.

The boys don’t just enjoy playing with the toy, they benefit from the experience, as the name implies. They put a token into a slot at the top of the toy every time they do a good deed.

“Giving people your time, money or kindness, being nice to others,” the boys learned.

In addition to Bene Bear, there is Sparkle the dog, a “Bene Buddy” that teaches respect, empathy, kindness and giving. It also comes with a book that reinforces those lessons, illustrated by local artist Gale Hinton.

A sea turtle is the latest in the line of toys developed by local mom Karalyne Ley.

“Seawhee the turtle is our latest “Bene Buddy” and Seawhee teaches kids about being patient, sharing, having cooperation, but then also some ocean conservation tips, and teaches them how to take care of our oceans and our beaches and our sea turtles,” Ley said.

The toys make up the Bene World company formed by Ley last year. Bene World stands for Benefit the World with an important goal of teaching positive behaviors over and over through the tokens.

“The hope is that basically they will go out into the world having these character traits kind of ingrained in their minds just because they learn so much from repetition so putting the token in time and time again whenever they express a trait will help that process a lot,” Ley continued.

The toys are a hit with kids and their moms.

As Leslie Cline shared, “as a mom, there are toys everywhere and some of them are great. Some of them are not. But these are toys that they can play with, they can love , but it also teaches them how to be kind.”

After her sons use up all the tokens for acts of kindness, they remove them from the toy and get a small reward for their actions, learning the power of giving and receiving kindness.

Toys with a Purpose are sold on Amazon and on the company’s website www.benebeargiving.com

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