Russian dolls

As part of our topic, we went to the Horniman Museum,in Forest Hil,l to find out about the types of toys played with, by children in other countries. Unfortunately, not all children are as lucky as we are and sometimes they don’t have enough money to buy their own toys, so they make them from natural or recycled materials, such as wood, grass, cloth and wire. Some of the toys were from Africa, including an aeroplane that was made out of an old oil can. We played with puppets and lots of push and pull-a-long toys. It was great fun! We came back to school and spent the next week making our own toys. We used recycled plastic bottles, old jam jar lids, broken pencils and ribbon to make Spinning Tops, Catchers and Cup and Ball games. We were so pleased with our toys that we played with them non-stop for the next two weeks! It made us realise just how much fun you can have making your own toys.

Now we are moving on to find out more about toys in the past. We have done some observational paintings of some old toys and, over the half term holiday, we interviewed our grandparents and other older relatives to find out about the kinds of toys and games they had when they were our age. Many of them said that they only ever received toys on special occasions, such as Christmas and that they had far fewer toys than we have. Most of their toys were made out of wood and metal as plastic hadn’t been invented. It has made us think about how lucky we are to have so many toys!