If children don't have toys to play with, they will improvise with whatever is at hand because playing is a natural instinct. Children learn through play and it's a healthy way of learning to socialize with other children. In the modern age of mass produced plastic toys, there is a growing interest in antique toys. Past toys were made of high quality and natural materials, such as wood and craftsmen fashioned them.
There are many companies that specialize in the sale of authentic antique toys or their replicas. Some toys and games have been around a lot longer than one might suppose. The Yo-Yo, for example, is thought to have been in existence thousands of years ago in Ancient Greece. The wooden toys were popular with children at the French court of the 1700s and were introduced into England in the following century.
Jacks have long been played on street corners, wherever children gather. Their evolution is also a long one and it's thought that a form of the game was played 2,000 years ago with animal bones and pebbles. The jack was later made from wood, then rubber and pewter. Marbles too have been played for thousands of years. They were extremely popular in the 19th century and were made from clay, stone or glass.
Many children enjoy a game of Pick Up Sticks. The game dates from the 1700s when it was known as Jackstraws. In common with other antique toys, it's gone in and out of fashion and is enjoying a surge of interest at the moment. Many parents are delighted to see toys from their own childhood back in the shops, so they can pass them on to the next generation.
Whipping tops are said to have come from the Far East and Native American tribes played with them in the frozen north on the ice. They became very fashionable in Victorian England and the craze was exported back to America, an example of antique toys going in a circle.
Ball and bat games have been played for a long time in one form or another, leading to the eventual modern pastimes of baseball, cricket and rounders. There were early balls made from cloth or wood, before the processing of rubber. Knurr and Spell was one of the best selling antique toys, a ball and bat set that used a hard ball and a bat made from native pine.
The list of popular antique toys includes familiar items such as wooden dolls, dominos, rocking horses, hopscotch sets, dice games, toy drums and toy penny whistles. In the days before television and computer games, these toys were the only sources of fun.
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