We found a wide assortment of toys in archaeological excavations within the Virginia City National Historic Landmark in Nevada. Here is an image of a small metal rider on a rocking horse (the scale is in centimeters). Other toys for boys included marbles, a tin wagon with a driver, and toy guns. Debris found beneath floorboards at the 4th Ward School included a 1904 deposit that revealed a paper airplane. School desks include carved notches that an elderly visitor told us was designed to hold a wooden ruler used to catapult spit wads. It may be unfair to associated spit wads exclusively with boys, but they may be immortal. I wrote about toys in the archaeological record in my book Virginia City: Secrets of a Western Past (Nebraska, 2012).

A quick Google for the history of children's toys reveals many excellent sites that will give you a wide variety of information. See this, for example.

In ancient Rome kids would play with toys such as scooters, yo-yos, marbles and skipping ropes. Roman children also used to have mini chariot races using dogs or goats to pull them along. In Ancient Greek children played with many toys, including rattles, little clay animals, horses on 4 wheels that could be pulled on a string, yo-yo's, and terra-cotta dolls. In places else where toys and games such as: mancala boards. Wooden, clay, stone animals(many had wheels) were played with. Chess. Toy boats. Dice.

Children would also play many similar games that we play today such as tag, wrestling, sword dueling, and many activities such as those in the Greek Olympics.

Kids also had pets, such as dogs, birds, goats, turtles, and mice.