PINWHEEL

The pinwheel is a simple child’s toy made of a wheel of paper or plastic curls attached at the axel to a stick by a pin. Designed to spin when blown upon by a person or by the wind, It’s a predecessor to the more complex whirligigs.

During the nineteenth century any wind-driven toy held aloft by a running child was characterised as a whirligig including pinwheels, and growing up in Ireland in the 50s and 60s this is what our family called them.