Toys & games

lan A playground slide (or slippery dip if you are in Australia) is a smooth slippery sloped surface that you slide down. They are usually made of metal or plastic and have a set of stairs or a ladder at the back to climb up.

A pogo stick is a toy with two handles for your hands and two steps for your feet with a strong spring at the bottom which allows you to jump very high.

Puppets are models of people or animals that you can control and make them move how you want to. Puppets are worked by putting your hand inside them, or by moving them using pieces of string. You use puppets to make up plays and tell stories.
An interesting kind of puppet is the shadow puppet, where instead of looking at the puppets performing you look at their shadows instead.

The queen piece in chess can move in all directions - up, down, left, right, and diagonally. It can go any number of squares as long as there are no pieces in the way. It is often the most valuable piece.

A rattle is an object that makes noises when you wave it around. Modern rattles are usually brightly coloured. They are considered an early baby toy.

A rollercoaster is a series of tracks that go up and down, and a cart that slides on the tracks. Rollercoasters can be very fast, and sometimes even have full loops in the tracks so you go upside down. Rollercoasters are great fun to ride on.

extension A game in which a small ball is spun around on a moving wheel, and people try to win money by guessing which hole the ball will fall into. Roulette games can be played at home with fake money as well as in a casino.

extension Russian nesting dolls, also known as matryoshka dolls or babushka dolls, are small wooden dolls that fit inside each other. Russian dolls can also depict animals.

A sandpit, also called a sandbox, is a small walled area filled with sand that children can play in.

Scrabble is a game where players draw letter tiles from a bag and use them to form words on a board that looks similar to a crossword puzzle.