What games did Grandma and Grandad play?

Last week we wrote letters to our grandparents and posted them "the old-fashioned way". We asked them some questions to help us with our historical inquiry about how toys and games have changed since the past.
This week we have been very lucky to have received a number of replies already. We have been very excited to receive our letters and have been extremely interested in the answers to our questions.

 

We have discovered that our grandparents spent a lot of time playing outside. Some of them were children at about the time of World War II or just after this time so their families were quite poor and they didn't have many store-bought toys.

A common thing to play with seems to be the billycart. We think that building a billycart and racing it down a hill sound like a lot of fun but just a bit dangerous.

Travel back in time to 1938 and explore Colum's backyard on the My Place website to have a go at building and racing a billycart.

What games did your grandparents play? What toys did they have?

Marvellous Mammandurs

The Mammandur is a spinning top that was played with by Aboriginal children of Awngthim, Weipa in Queensland.
Traditionally the mammandur was made from beeswax and a stick. It was spun by rubbing the stick between two palms or by using the thumb and middle finger to twist it.
We made our own mammandur out of wooden sticks and play dough. We made a circular disc from the playdough and pushed the skewer through the middle of the circle. We discovered that it worked best if we put a little bit of play dough under the disc so it didn't keep falling down. We tried using different methods of spinning the mammandur.

We think it would be interesting to see a real mammandur one day. We wonder if there are other toys that were played with by Aboriginal children and if there are other spinning toys used by children in other cultures.