Talking about old toys
Use the questions below to talk with children about old dolls. Talk about the doll here, or use the questions to explore old dolls you and the children may have brought in to your setting or classroom.
Dolls are thought to be the oldest type of toy in the world. The first dolls were made from materials such as clay, stone, wood, leather – even bone.
Use the questions below to talk with children about old dolls. Talk about the doll here, or use the questions to explore old dolls you and the children may have brought in to your setting or classroom.
Try turning it into a game. Look at the doll for one minute and then take it away or close your eyes. How many details can you remember? Look again:
This toy is more than 100 years old – that’s even older than your grannies and grandads.
The doll is made of a few different things:
What might this doll have seen in her long life?
Do you think she has been on any journeys or adventures?
Or perhaps she stayed on a shelf and watched what was going on in the house she lived in?
Set up a doll’s hospital.
Children could organise and make labels for first-aid supplies such as bandages and plasters.
They could dress up as a nurse or a doctor, take the dolls’ temperatures, listen to their chests through a stethoscope and give them pretend medicine.
Doll materials
Children can look online or in toy catalogues for pictures of dolls made from different materials – china, plastic, wax, wood, fabric.
They could make a group collage or spider diagram showing the advantages and disadvantages of each material.
Recycled dolls
A simple doll can be made from almost any material.
Take a look at this peg doll from Preston Park Museum.
It has been made from an old wooden peg that was usually used to hang washing on a washing line. It would have been owned by a poor child more than 100 years ago.
What materials can children recycle into a doll? They could use an old-fashioned peg like this one, lolly sticks, pipe-cleaners, fabric scraps…
Don’t forget to give the doll some clothes. They could be made of paper, fabric or even drawn or painted on.
Our old peg doll seems to have lost her clothes. What do children think they might they have looked like?
Young historians
What questions do children have about old dolls? Encourage them to think carefully about something they would really like to find out about this doll or an old doll in your classroom. They could take it in turns to hold a picture of a large question mark, and think of a question beginning with Who, Where, Why, What, When or How to share with the group or class.
Where could they find out the answers? They could: