Year 1 History – Toys
Project Overview
During this half term, year 1 have been learning about toys through history. We began the topic by bringing our own favourite toys into school for a show and tell. We spent some time describing the features of our toys and then sorting them into categories. We then looked at some older toys and compared the features of the older toys to new toys. We learned that a lot of older toys are made from wood, whereas newer toys are often made from plastic. We also know that a lot of newer toys need batteries to work! We rounded off our topic with a trip to Abbey House Museum. Here, we were able to explore what life was like in Victorian Leeds and spent some time in their workshop learning about toys from the Victorian era. We even got to play with some of the old toys!
What The Student Says
“I liked learning that in the old days, the old toys were made out of wood.”
“I liked learning about new toys that grown ups didn’t play with when they were little.”
“I liked when we sorted the toys into old and new toys.”
“The trip to the toy museum was really fun. I liked learning about all the old toys.”
– Year 1 children
What skills were developed?
The children have:
- Begun to develop an understanding of the terms same and different
- Developed an understanding of old and new
- Been able to categorise objects based on colour, shape and material
- Described how things change over time
- Given well structed descriptions and participated in discussions
- Begun to give justified arguments/explanations
What The Teacher Says
It has been great to see the children’s enthusiasm and engagement throughout this topic. It has been clear that they have loved playing with and learning about toys from the past. It’s been fantastic to witness children’s confidence growing through class discussions and I really enjoyed listening to the children talk about their favourite toys. I was also impressed with what the children had learned as part of their homework project – hearing about their parents’ and grandparents’ favourite toys and the comparisons with their favourite toys really helped the children to see how much certain things change over time, even toys!
– Miss Naughton
