You can incorporate ICT in a topic about toys.
Many children have some sort of battery-operated, remote or radio controlled toy at home. Encourage them to explore the instructions that they need to give to operate each one, and then to sequence those instructions to make them work. This is also an ideal way of introducing a floor robot such as Roamer or Pip.
As a class, sort different toys by categories such as old and new, big and small, plastic and wood. The Naturegrid website has a lesson plan on sorting toys, with a downloadable Textease file to sort toys on screen into sets. There is also a downloadable learning poster for 'Technology Around Us'. The Channel 4 website has a sorting game for children to sort a collection of toys into Victorian and modern groups.
If you are interested in exploring Victorian toys further, then try some of the E-toys available on the Virtual Victorians website. Here you can play with traditional building blocks, dress a Victorian doll and even create a printable Victorian decoupage scrapbook.
A toys theme is a good way to introduce children to science. One of the science topics on the Sir Robert Hitcham's School website focuses on forces in toys and provides suggestions on the type of toys that fall into different categories, such as push (roll, spring up or spin toys) and pull (roll or slide toys). The 'All about Toys' CD-Rom from Granada Learning is designed to support the teaching of physical processes at Key Stage 1 science and also encourages discussion, develops scientific vocabulary and provides lots of secondary information.
Websites
* www.naturegrid.org.uk/infant/earlyict/toys.html
* www.channel4.com/learning/ microsites/Q/qca/victorians/toyshop.html
* http://tofino.ex.ac.uk/virvic/ etoys/home.htm
* www.hitchams.suffolk.sch.uk/ schoolweb/science.htm
