Culture toys and games

toys and games

Most young children are given toys for their birthday or at Christmas. Many regularly spend their pocket money on smaller toys. Popular toys include building bricks such as Lego, plastic farm animals, toy cars, model railways and dressing-up costumes. Many children have dolls, and several sets of clothes to dress them in. Particularly popular are Action Man figures and Barbie dolls. Babies are given rattles (= toys that make a noise when shaken), soft toys and teddy bears. Action figures, small plastic models of characters from television shows or films, are also popular. Some parents do not allow their children to have guns or other toys that represent weapons because they do not want them to think it is fun to injure or kill people.

Among traditional games that are still popular are board games such as snakes and ladders and Cluedo, card games such as Happy Families and Snap, and word games such as hangman and Scrabble.

Children play outside with skipping ropes, bicycles, skateboards, scooters and Rollerblades™. In playgrounds there are often swings, a slide, a see-saw and a climbing frame (NAmE jungle gym) to climb on. Traditional games played outside include hopscotch, a game in which children hop over squares drawn on the ground to try to pick up a stone, and tag, in which one child runs after the others until they catch one of them and then that child has to chase the rest.

Few people give up games completely when they become adults. Many people play card games like bridge and poker, and board games such as Scrabble, Monopoly, backgammon and chess.

Games consoles and apps are very popular. Games can be played online, either against a real opponent, who is playing somewhere else on their own device, or against a computer program that can be set to a suitable level of difficulty.