I look at young children today and between phones and tablets , there is no room for the old-fashioned pastimes:playtime I remember, hopscotch, Jack’s, jump rope. What are your memories of your playtime?
I look at young children today and between phones and tablets , there is no room for the old-fashioned pastimes:playtime I remember, hopscotch, Jack’s, jump rope. What are your memories of your playtime?
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Red light green light, frozen catchers, my friends and I traipsing through the woods and pastures. Most anything you could do outdoors.
Digging holes in the backyard, well, just to dig and see what’s under. And of course, the chance we’d dig all the way to China.
All the yard games, kick the can, hide n seek, swinging statues, Barbie’s, sports, drawing, reading, watching TV
Kickball, tree climbing and riding my bike. And when my tomboy cousin came to visit, we both loved exploring the scrap metal bins at the local mills, walking the railroad tracks and playing in the crick. I still hang out by the river and ride my bike, but it has electric assist. 🙂
We had a LOT of woods to play in. We would go out, stake our territory, and build “houses.” There was a lot of garbage thrown around parts of the woods (old bottles, household items), so we, like the little rodents we were, would dig around it and find treasures to stock our abodes. I cannot express enough how important tetanus shots were for us, LOL.
Hot Wheels, slot cars and building model cars and planes
Ghost in the graveyard, building forts. Spending all day in the woods.
How much time do they get for recess these days? Do they know how to play outside anymore?
Mother May I, baseball in the street, playing in the woods, bicycling around the neighborhood, kickball, jump rope, jacks, hopscotch, Red Rover, dodge ball, we were outdoors whenever possible.
My buddies and I played touch football and stickball in the street while the girls did their double Dutch jump rope.
Boys and girls played hide and go seek together.
Kickball. Bike riding. Throwing a rubber baseball against the side of the house. Frisbee. Toy soldiers. Hot Wheels. Tonka trucks. Playing Army (wearing our dads’ old fatigues). Football. Making skateboards by strapping stuff to metal roller skates and rolling down the driveway.
It was like the movie Stand by Me.
Pickup baseball all summer long. Bicycles behind home plate to stop pitches. Right field was out. Ground outs were thrown to the pitcher. Other team was catcher. Pitches were like batting practice. You got a lot of smashes at shortstop.
Quad skates that clamped onto your shoes. Don’t lose the skate key. Red light, green light. Simon says. Dodgeball.
Building forts in the field next door and throwing rocks at each other. Until the street lights came on then we hoofed it home before mom got angry.
My brothers and I and our friends played a lot of wiffle ball and two hand touch footbal. Rode bikes constantly.
Tether ball, four square, bike riding, throwing rocks at army men, swimming, hiking.
The tree house
This thread is making me profoundly sad with nostalgia…
We were card sharks – my sisters and I would play poker for jolly ranchers and life savers. We knew how to play Gin Rummy too but our favorite was Mille Bornes. We played backgammon and chess, Monopoly and Sorry – also jacks and marbles and hop scotch. Swimming at the public pool as often as we were able but mostly things that didn’t cost money. We made up songs in the car and little family nick names for one another that only the sisters are allowed to call one another. We would collect empty bottles for a fresh soda, share it and have a burping contest.
I’d leave in the morning, everything from exploring, riding our bikes, canoeing, fishing going to the YMCA, you name it nothing was off the list, usually getting home late where mom kept my dinner warm in the oven!
Depended on winter or summer
In the summer we were in a rural area of New Jersey. Although we did go to day camp at times and also had organized trips to the beach, a lot of time was just spent hanging out. We would pick berries; actually swam in the small “brook” that was down the street – old fashioned type very small “waterhole”. Indoors we played a lot of Monopoly as I recall as well as some odd stuff like. the Battleship game. Cards.
Winter I was in Brooklyn on a fairly quiet residential street of single family homes. Potsie, Ringolevio and stoop ball but I wasn’t really much into those kinds of outdoor games so I read a lot; went to the movies; had piano and art and dance lessons;
I rode my bike, read, dig a big hole in my back yard (which never got filled in and we just kept playing in the hole.) My parents made me garden, which I hated at the time, but I absolutely love it now. But by the time I was 14 (generally accepted smartphone age these days) I was addicted to the TV. I don’t think things are all that different now, as far as screens are concerned, but I do think we should have taken the early warnings about social media more seriously.
My siblings and I did a lot of pretend play, and played with Legos and with dolls. I remember a few periods of my life where we lived by woods or sometimes tiny strips of “woods” and would wander them a little and pretend to be explorers, etc. I rode my bike a little, but I was lazy and unathletic, and often lived on roads that were too busy and dangerous to really enjoy bicycling.
I read books like crazy. But mostly, tbh, my sibs and I watched television. Lots and lots of television.
My sons, in comparison, spent endless hours exploring woods and creeks and neighborhoods, and also enjoyed gaming on computers and other devices. Especially my youngest, who is just 20 now. Building contraptions and bunkers and animal traps, exploring woods and creeks and lakes and defunct train tracks, treehouses, experiments, pretend play, wrote plays, started silly clubs complete with newsletters, made movies, madeup sports, biked obstacle courses, and also did organized activities like Karate, gymnastics, theater, tee ball, flag football, baking and pottery and drawing. Plus he had the added joy of the internet and video games. He built his own computer at age 13, and helped several friends build theirs. He has irl friends but also online friends from all over the country. It’s amazing.
Imo, my kids’ childhoods were way better than mine. And I think the potential is off the charts for most kids now. There’s so much more opportunity for fun and learning nowadays. Of course many don’t get to take advantage of it all, and that’s a shame, but most of it didn’t even exist for regular kids in my day.
•Making ‘potions’ from dirt, berries, grass, sticks, etc.
•Smashing open rocks
•skimming stones
•catching minnows in a coffee can
•making mud pies
•making clay from clay deposits in the dirt
•playing tons of games like hide and seek, kick the can, cops and robbers, red rover
•cats cradle, ‘Chinese’ jump rope, folding paper up and asking questions ( I forget what that is called)
That’s up to the parents. My grandchildren are not glued to their iPads or phones because their parents aren’t and we all play with them. Their time on iPads etc are strictly limited. Hanging out with their friends means playing, building forts etc.
We were free to roam at 6 and explore our neighbourhood. Played in the dirt, gardened, climbed trees, make awful perfume , board games, reading, creating, sewing, knitting, playing jacks, hopscotch, skipping rope, playgrounds. As young teens hopping on the bus or tube train somewhere, sat morning pictures and the local cinema, dance halls, seaside.
Our free range ways were however seriously compromised by the fear of serial killers after the moors murders and Mary Bell in the 60’s. Tighter reins until teen years and expected to follow certain rules. My children and grandchildren could never have that kind of freedom.
We had a lamppost between our gate and the nextdoor neighbours gate, during the summer, a length of rope would be tied to the post and either myself or my brother would have to stand on the pavement the other side of the road, and swing the rope so our sisters could skip, for hours on end. Sometimes some of the mums would come out and join in.
We had a empty area in town, between neighborhoods, near the groceries store/ strip mall area. It was a couple of acres in area, anyway, I guess some of the parents got together and made like a bike course with hills and stuff. I would spend hours riding my bike in there. That was about a five minute bike ride from my house. If I rode my bike down another 5 to 10 minutes there would be an elementary school playground that I would hang out at, play on the monkey bars and the swings. If I went west from there I could go down to the river to throw stones. If I went the other direction from my house there was a huge park and a place where they would keep horses that I would go visit, Otherwise I would play in my own back yard or my neighborhood. We’d climb trees or play kick the can or hide and seek.
Looking for 4 leaf clovers .
We would all play outside all day long..we had a big green area in front of the houses so everything was played on that. Tennis, football, rounders, races. We have skipping and jump rope on the roads, races on our bikes and rollerskates, chalk on the road, make pudpies…going for a walk to the near by swamp and collecting frog spawn and seeing them get bigger …everything and anything. We grew up with a happy child is a dirty child..covered in mud and dirt at the end of th day…. You knew it was a good day when you came back with mud under your nails. Hate seeing kids now all clean from sitting indoors all devices all day long.
Playing in the woods, building forts, hunting for agates, picking berries and fruit for snacks, jumping on hay bales in the neighbors barn, catching fireflies, countless games of pom pom pull-away.
Swimming all summer, riding our bikes for hours, going to the playground, roller skating, making forts in the snow, and going sledding. Just having the best time with no worries. I truly miss those days.
Catching Crawford in my grandparents creek when I visited during the summers.
Just using our imaginations. We weren’t swinging across a creek. It was a river with alligators.
We weren’t speeding our bikes down the street. We were outrunning monsters.
We built tree forts and had apple wars. We built snow forts for snowball fights.
We had fun. As much as I see kids linked into electronics or going to some after-school activity, they don’t seem happy about it.
My kids are 1999 and 1997. We lived in a suburb in minnesota.And trust me, they were outside all the time. We lived across the street from a park and they were always playing pickup games of kickball or baseball. It’s really sad when kids come to school and say all they did. All weekend was watch tv or play on their tablets when it was a beautiful day outside. I am a teacher by the way. We also had a basketball hoop in a driveway that got maximum use by my older son. I grew up in the seventies, and we were outside on our bikes all the time. Kick the can red rover, red rover statue maker. Jacks!!!
We live on a really quiet rural road and two of the neighbor kids are out on their scooters for hours zipping up and down the road, sometimes running through my yard. Or running their remote control cars in the mud next to our storage shed. They drive my dog nuts, but I’m so happy to see it. They’re great kids.
We live on a really quiet rural road and two of the neighbor kids are out on their scooters for hours zipping up and down the road, sometimes running through my yard. Or running their remote control cars in the mud next to our storage shed. They drive my dog nuts, but I’m so happy to see it. They’re great kids.
Listening to Donnie Osmond, and looking at the posters on the wall
We were basically feral. Outside as much as possible.
I cannot emphasize how much my bicycle meant to me as a kid. It was FREEDOM. Well at least until the street lights started coming on. I once (age 11) rode 32 miles to visit grandma. Step grandpa drove me to about 3 blocks from home so I could “ride home” in time.
Playing explorer in the woods and creek. With friends or by myself, it was always an amazing sensory experience.
My bike and my roller skates. Tickets to freedom.
Still have jump rope. Riding on scooters or push bikes, writing, or drawing with chalk. Things that are like swings (they are meant to be safer), kicking a football or soccer ball between friends.
It’s great talking children out. They run around and get tired.
There were a lot of baseball related games: catch, hot box also called pickle or run down, work ups and sliding practice. We played until it was too dark to see the ball.
I used to play four square everyday with my schoolmates.
hopscotch, jump-rope, horsey basketball, SPUD (and if you lost you went through the ‘hot oven’) , kick-the-can, hide-and-seek, wiffle ball, bicycling, kroquet, marbles, cat’s cradle (with string) , ping-pong, badminton, lawn darts, kickball, red rover.
Parents couldn’t keep us in the house. Wolf down your Capn Crunch or your Cream-of-Wheat and then we were out the door. Had lunch at whoever’s house we were playing at that day. Knew that we had to be home for dinner at 5:30, other than that our parents didn’t know where we were all day, if they needed us they’d have to call around and ask neighbors to send us home if they saw us kicking around.
Just think. It reflects the extreme garbage people have to deal with. Your kids are in the yard by themselves. Cps is called. Small scab, cps, kid wandering by themselves, cps. Self entitled children experts claim we were neglected as children for all the above reasons. Now dictator overreach it’s going to be worse. Kids play electronics inside instead of being taken away
Playing in mud puddles, playing with dolls, paper dolls, stuffed animals, climbing trees, going to the local park and playing on the slide, swings, seesaw, etc,
Games with other kids: jacks, box ball, badminton (had a badminton net in my back yard), kickball, softball, cowboys and Indians, hide-and-go-seek, board games, card games
Riding bikes, fishing in the canal, swimming in neighbors’ pools or a local “lake” (rock pit).
Roller skating on the sidewalks, walking on stilts, walking the dog (I was allowed to walk her around the block when I was quite young), pushing the cat around in my doll “baby stroller” (it ripped).
Mother May I and Simon Says were roughly the same but we played both.
Only child. And only child on the block. So it was mostly solo play. Digging holes. Weaving leaves into mats. Smashing rocks. Bike riding (dead end street). Swinging on my swing. Playing with my 🐇. Reading. Kicking a ball around. Coloring books. Harmonica ( Dad retreated to the garage, wonder why). Made a course of things to leap over. Jump rope. And had my own set of tools, hammer, screwdrivers, coping saw, etc. Yes, I have all my appendages, and no, nothing was ever broken.
freeze tag
I once tried to “dig to China” once as a kid, . . . . til my father saw the hole in the front yard and made me fill it back in.
At home and at school: Jacks, pick-up sticks, hopscotch, Creepy Crawlers, playing with dolls, messing around outside with imaginary play, jump rope, running around in the yard with the sprinkler going, something we called “Chinese jump rope,” secret clubs, making up codes, being in a pretend band, pencil&Paper word games, running or riding bikes or roller skating around the neighborhood pretending we were spies or explorers, Ouija when a little older, board game The Game of Life. All so much fun, much giggling among friends and siblings and neighbors and cousins left me with fabulous memories. Edited to add: hide and seek, Red Rover, Mother May I, Red Light Green Light, and a zillion variations on good old-fashioned tag.
I just want to say thank you so much to everyone who responded
Playing baseball, riding my bike, hanging out in the tree house smoking cigarette, throwing dirt clods at each other, shooting BB guns at targets (not birds), going to the ditch road (which we were strictly forbidden to) because some kid had drowned there, lots of fun things. We used to play Monopoly when it was too hot to play outside (Phoenix and Glendale, AZ) back when Phoenix was a city and Glendale was a town.
We’re huge believers in outside play. But our kid, no matter how many years we kicked him and his friends outside to play, would just wait til he could get back inside and read or play with Pokémon cards or Magic the Gathering. I allow myself to think even young Abe Lincoln in his log cabin was probably a nerdy inside kid.
I climbed things: trees, roofs, jungle gyms (or those dome style climbing things in older playgrounds), hay bails, and any chance I could…attics. One favorite thing with cousins was simply walking/roaming, destination not required. This tied into the comparative freedom we had.
On my own I thoroughly enjoyed toys though, anything from army men to Transformers. My most prized thing was my bike, which again tied to my ability to just roam & wander the streets.
Hurling magnolia cones at each other when cars weren’t driving by.
There was an abandoned apple orchard at the end of our street. Climbed all those trees, ate apples and carved our names into the trees. Rode bikes and explored all the woods and creeks.
We played baseball almost everyday in the summer. In between times we would have pea shooter battles, play army, when it rained we played in the gutter and sometimes we would hike to the zoo, the museum or Forbes Field to see Clemente, Stargell and Maz!!!!
2nd, 3rd and 4th grades, it was get on the bike and do things with my buddies in the neighborhood. There was a woods nearby and we spent a lot of time there in good weather. In bad weather, we’d get together and play Monopoly or other games or just watch kids shows on TV. By myself, I did quite a bit of reading.
In 5th grade, we moved out in the country to my grandmother’s house with no other kids close by. When school was over, I went home and was by myself. I learned to shoot pretty well and definitely did a LOT of reading. We did some fishing on weekends. I also got interested in ham radio and got my FCC license at age 11 and built my first transmitter from a kit. At age 79, I’m still an active ham.
Skipping, hula hoops, roundrrs, British bulldog
We rode our bikes literally all over the city when we were kids.
Hopscotch, tether ball, hand ball, bike riding, roller skating, skateboarding, hide-n-seek…. Just being OUTSIDE in general was a thing when I was a kid!
My roller skates were my favorite toy. All the girls on the block had them and we’d skate up and down for a couple hours at a time.
Outside. If it wasn’t sleeting or raining cats and dogs, then out we went. Tag, hopscotch, chalking up the sidewalks, playing with our Tonka trucks building communities in the dirt, swimming, building tree forts, biking around the neighborhood for hours on end and sitting and having conversations about what our future would be like. Arguments on whether teleportation is cooler than flying cars.
Inside it would be reading, playing board games with the sibs (when your could talk them into it), Erector sets, Lincoln Logs, watching Saturday morning cartoons and Sunday afternoon movies (pirates!) and just staring out the window daydreaming.
Hide-go seek… lots of us and playing long past the streetlights coming until someone’s mom would come out on the porch and hollered “boys, time to get home…!” 60’s time frame
Board games are coming back and my grandchildren play them, now more than ever. I hope this trend continues.
Roller skating in shoe-skates. Bike riding. Baseball in the street. Tetherball. Hide ‘n Seek. Swimming at the community pool. Going to the beach.
A major pastime in my neighborhood growing up in the 70s and early 80s…
Step-Ball: throwing a tennis ball at the front edge of the concrete front steps of our houses so that the ball bounces back over the “pitcher’s” shoulder and the guy behind the pitcher has to try to catch it like a baseball outfielder. Depending on distance the ball went and whether the other guy caught it, it was a foul ball, a one, two, or three base hit, or a home run. Each successful (uncaught) “hit” allowed each “man on base” to proceed the number of bases as the “hit” allowed. A catch was an out and no man on base moved. Bad throws that didn’t result in a bounce that would land within the “field” were fouls, and even worse throws were strikes. I think we used to play to seven points.
There was a street in my neighbourhood, it was really really steep. I remember having contests to see who could ride their bike all the way up. I never could. We would be at it for hours. My friends little brother was the only one who could do it, he delivered papers there so he got good at it.
Hopscotch, jump rope, freeze tag, rollerskating and riding my bike were all fun outside activities.
We also played video games and played with our Barbies and board games when we were indoors.
For me it’ was mostly baseball but then soccer became popular and now lacrosse is on the rise. For me it’s still baseball.
Let’s see…
TW: Offensive and Racist game names ahead.
I put in the warning because those were the times.
At school, as a girl, I was usually playing jacks and chinese jump rope at recess in elementary school.
In middle school, we got more physical and play Red Rover and Smear the Queer. ( StQ was basically someone had an ‘item’, a ball or frisbee, and the entire rest of the group tried to tackle him/her with no mercy. ) Those two games cause a number of broken bones and were eventually banned and taken down to tag and Red Rover you could only hold hands, not elbows.
After school or on Weekends, everyone grabbed a popgun and stick horse and we played cowboys and indians, or we ran into the scrubland and built forts. Some sort of wargame was always afoot.
When we were older, we’d get our horses and play ‘chicken’. This involved burying a cap with just the bill sticking up, two contestants facing off equidistant from the cap, and galloping toward each other like in a joust, where you tried with your right hand to grab the cap while hanging off the side of your horse. The horses were never in danger of running into each other, but the people were in danger of hitting each other if the grab timing was off or no one pulled up as the chicken.
I used to build little villages for toads. Little houses made of stone and mud, little stores stocked with bugs I’d caught. A toad church, toad schools. They had it all.
My younger sister and I would ride one of the horses bareback because we were too lazy to saddle up. We’d be gone for hours, exploring the woods, picking berries, getting scratched up and sometimes thrown from the horse. We’d come back at sunset, covered in mud and brambles, ready for dinner and whatever was on TV that night.
We’d ride our bikes on this country trail that was full of dips and horseshoe curves. The feeling of going fast and hitting one of those dips – the momentary feeling of weightlessness is something I can still remember to this day.
We’d play the in the creek and catch minnows and crayfish. We’d make dams. We’d walk the creek as far as we could to “see where it came from.”
In the winter, we’d build snow forts and snowmen. We’d go sled riding. My father has this weird sled thing that only had one “runner.” We spent many winters trying to master this contraption.
Touch football. Plus you’d walk on to a baseball field with a bat and glove and a game would happen.
Don’t forget Lawn darts!
I live on the family farm and we have all of our family holiday parties out here. Kids get the boot out side almost as soon as they get here. They have a fort, and some pretty fantastic stories of stuff that happens there, they often return covered head to toe in mud. So much so I installed a warm water outdoor sprayer to clean them off. My dog hangs out with them on over watch without being told he just does it. All girls by the way.
I lived in a neighborhood with easily 50-60 kids. We used to section off a vacant lot (very large lot) and make a “city”. My favorite game was foursquare.
WE made puppets and wrote plays for them. We also climbed trees, rode bikes, played with baby dolls. ( pre Barbie Era) Played jacks and marbles.
Kick the can – Ghost in the grave yard – 500 – Tackle football – BB gun wars – fort building in the woods
But the number one thing to do was bike riding. All day for countless miles.
I was outside a lot as a kid. Riding my bicycle, playing kickball, skate boarding, swimming, sledding, ice skating, hanging out down near the creek, riding my bicycle, etc.
I was an older mom and had my first child at 39. He was born in 2003, and the second son was born in 2006. I got both of them outside everyday so by bedtime they were ready for bed. I always remembered the importance of playing outside.
We got ringworm and roundworm more than once, I assume from digging in the dirt. It was really common in the 1950s and 1060s, when digging in the dirt was also common. My son is a child of the 2000, and it occurred to me after he was grown that he never got either of those, not even once. He also never spent a summer barefoot, since I worked and he was in daycare or afterschool.