children in the victorian times

Children at play

As regards the street games, children shared toys like hoops, marbles and skipping ropes, with friends in the street, or also in the school playground. They played chasing games such as tag and played catch with balls. If they didn’t have an appropriate ball, they made balls on their own, from old rags, and bats from pieces of wood.

Hoops Skipping ropes

They also played hopscotch. Hopscotch (mainly for girls) consists of dropping a stone on a square and jumping on it so as to go as far as possible to beat your friends. Victorian children were able to play out in the street since there wasn’t too much traffic unlike today. Moreover, there were no cars until the 1880s and only the richest could buy one.

Skipping ropes

Playing cricket Football

Tossing an egg into a cap

Indoors, children played board games such as Snakes and Ladders (which became a popular toyshop game towards the end of the 19th century), Ludo, Draughts, and also card games. A popular card game was called Happy Families, introduced in the middle of the Victorian period. There were also pencil and paper games, such as Noughts and Crosses, which we still play today. Children played table games, such as Tiddlywinks, popular in the 1980s.

< TiddlywinksThe objective of the game is to score points by sending your own winks into the pot and preventing the opponent from squopping your winks by placing your own winks on top of them.

Poor Children :

Poor families made their own toys, such as cloth-peg dolls and paper windmills. Children would save their pocket money to buy marbles, a spinning top, skipping ropes, kites or cheap wooden toys.

Rich Children :

Girls played with dolls and tea sets while boys played with toy soldiers and marbles.

During Victorian times, people became fascinated by toys that made pictures move. One of the earliest and simplest of these was the thaumatrope (disc with a picture on either, which is attached to two pieces of a string or a stick so as that the pictures combine into one ). We can also find alphabet bricks, sailing boats, jigsaw puzzles and Noah's Arks in rich families. The rich children had rocking horses with real horse hair manes, and dolls houses with miniature furniture. Other popular toys for rich children included china or wax dolls for the girls and clockwork train sets for the boys.

What toys did Victorian children play with ?Victorian children had fewer toys than we can find today.

Paper windmills

Marbles

Spinning top

Noughts and crosses

Draughts

Tea sets Hoops

Battledore and shuttlecock

Happy Families Jigsaw puzzles

Alphabet bricks

Toy soldiers Rocking horses

Snakes and ladders Clockwork train

Wax dolls

Bagatelle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F9Nt3okVBc&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hfrQCPDaD0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLzweQqAqa8

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/victorian_britain/children_at_play/