Learning activities

Starter activities

Starter activity Sa (Links to all main activities)

Children to bring into class a toy or game from home. Discuss what they are made of and how they are used. Show a slideshow of the sources illustrating Victorian toys and games. Discuss differences with modern toys and games.

Main activities

Main activity Ma (Links to any plenary activity)

Visit a local museum or borrow a loan box of artefacts from the museum, or look at the source gallery 'Leisure - Toys' on this website. Children to make drawings of Victorian toys. Children could annotate the drawings to show materials and uses. Children could then compare them to modern toys.

Main activity Mb (Links to any plenary activity)

Look through the pages of toys in the catalogues of Argos, Gamleys, and such like. Children then design a Victorian page for a catalogue, featuring one or some of the toys in the sources. This would be an ideal activity to complete on the computer. It could be made more challenging by introducing Victorian money and trying to use Victorian fonts.

Main activity Mc (Links to any plenary activity)

Make a Victorian toy, for example a Thaumatrope, Zoetrope, paper dolls and clothes or moving scenery cards. ('Make your own...' instructions are easily found on the internet.)

Plenary activities

Plenary activity Pa (Links to the starter and to any main activity)

Discuss 'Why are the toys we have today different from those Victorian children played with?'

Plenary activity Pb (Links to the starter and to any main activity)

Play 'Toy Shop Game' - "I went to the Victorian Toy Shop and I bought". If children mention something that the rest of the class decide is not a Victorian toy, then the child is 'out'. Children to repeat the previous list and add to it.