What games and activities seem to have disappeared since you were young?

Question

OK seniors it's half term and the children are going to get bored at some point.

Any 'blasts from the past' that are 7/8yr old friendly for indoors or out?

hi, what's grannys footsteps and my red letter?

Indy500, We've even got the scars to prove it, LOL.

Bert, pussie four corners? Please explain.

Would it be possible for a brief explanation to be attached to some of these older sounding ones? They sound interesting but I can't try them out on the nippers with no rules....

cheers for the rules-we used to call granny's footsteps 'what time is it mr wolf?' when I was little. Ahhh memories....

You know I'd forgotten a heap of these from when I was small-and why don't we see kids with skipping ropes anymore? (not sure my son could be trusted with bamboo poles tho, lol).

Pollyanna, I know, so sad. I count myself so lucky that comparitively our children are incredibly safe around here (the armed guards help mind you!)

Answer 1

Red Rover, Kick the Can, Freeze Tag, and Kick Ball seem to have gone by the wayside. I also don't see kids building forts or tree houses anymore. (heck - - I don't see kids playing baseball at the park anymore unless it's organized by some league.)

Answer 2

British bulldog
stuck in the mud
Granny's footsteps
whats the time Mr wolf
my red letter
cats cradle
tig or tag
skipping



Granny's footsteps - someone stands facing the wall and the others have to creep up behind them, the person against the wall has to turn around and try to catch them moving, if they do they have to go back to the start(this is usually a wall opposite). The winner is the one who makes it to the wall first!! Hope I explained that ok for you?


my red letter - it'll take far too long to explain and i'm not sure i remember the rules correctly!!!

Answer 3

At age 52 all the games I played are still around but what I miss the most is not being able to let your children or grandchildren outside after dark.
I used to have such fun playing hide and seek at night or catching fireflies and walking around the neighbourhood with friends when I was 11 or 12.

In today's society it is no longer safe to let a child or even children outside unattended by an adult.
That is what has disappeared for me that I find sad.

Answer 4

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It's surely the leader game of its type.

Answer 5

Jacks, flipping ball cards, dodge ball, paper dolls, playing with trains, selling lemonade. Does anyone remember Spanish 7? It was a game you played by throwing a ball against a wall, and you had to do certain stunts ( like turning around), before you caught the ball. Each level got harder.

Answer 6

I have recently started playing frisbee although the more modern version is now a phat ball. We used to play with quoits.
What about those poles with a ball attatched. You hit to each other. Table tennis.
We used to play with a games compendium for hours but now people play games on the computer or use dvd.

Answer 7

Hop scotch, Tic Tac Toe

Answer 8

1) BINGO...not the one with the cards though. Bingo was played with a ball up against a solid wall....
For B you would bounce the ball against the wall and catch it.
For I you would bounce the ball against the ground in such a way that it would also bounce against the wall, and then you would catch it.
For N you had to bounce the ball ground/wall, by passing it under your lifted left leg.
For G you bounced the ball ground/wall, passing under the lifted right leg.
For O you bounced the ball ground/wall passing it under your spread legs, with both feet planted.

A harder version of BINGO involved spinning around completely AFTER doing the regular BINGO move and BEFORE catching the ball.

2) I also dearly loved a jumping type game we played with white 1/8 inch elastic. Two kids would hold the ends of a 12 foot piece of elastic, while the others got to do the jumping. You would first start out with the elastic held at ankle level, then knee, then hip, then waist, then chest, then head, then arms reach above your head. The point was for each of the kids to pass over the elastic , making sure that you placed one foot on one side, and the other foot on the other side.

Of course anything up to hip was easy. The hard part came when you had to start jumping up and hooking your foot over the elastic, and then landing on the other side with JUST that foot.

Easier tries would be allowing hands to be used to steady you while you were getting the rest of your body over (and you WEREN'T finished until your whole body was over to the other side, balanced on that one foot). More difficult tries required no use of hands at all--extremely hard to accomplish for the over the head tries, but possible with practise.

It was also very easy to get the elastic yanked out of your hands when you were trying to hold it against the yank of the person jumping, so loops were tied at the end, which we would hook over our index fingers, and then hold our fist tightly closed.

3) And the last of my favorites was dancing in and out of rhythmically slamming poles wielded by two kids on each end. The poles were usually bamboo and twelve feet long. The kids wielding them would start with them resting on the ground about 15 inches apart, and then to the rhythm of a chant (which for the life of me I can't remember now, but all those kind that we double-dutched to would be okay) first slam the poles on the ground twice, then together twice, with the dancer doing skipping moves inside when the poles were being slammed to the ground, then outside when the poles were being slammed together.

Of course the chant and the slamming would start out slow, but gradually speed up until everyone was just flying.

The harder versions would have you doing it all on one leg or the other, or having a group of particular steps the dancer had to perform.

Answer 9

twister - (esp. coed!)

anything outdoors - hide & seek, cops & robbers, kick the can

'doctor' - although i suspect they still play that today ;-)

unorganized anything - baseball, football, etc. seems all kid sports now need to be an organized team, with schedules and practices. we used to just find 10 kids to play baseball, pick teams and play all day - yup, 10 hr baseball, scores sounded like a bloody cricket match.

Jarts (a lawn dart version of horseshoes)

Answer 10

Hide and seek at twilight. We had to stop when the streetlights came on.

Slot cars - I learned all about winding electrical motors, and how, if your wire was too thick, would trip all the circuit breakers.

Treehouses, and ladders to access them. And falling out of treehouses.