Hide & Seek and Tag Cowboys and Indians or anything that involved guns and shooting. Bizarre as it sounds but we would use sticks that looked like guns and shoot each other. Why is it that young boys do this? Corn fights - we would basically beat each other with corn cobs or the entire stock Cat tail fights .. soak cat tails in water and proceed to beat each other over the head .. what fun ... Card games like Crazy 8's , Snap, War, Go Fish Oh, and we all played ice, pond and road hockey again beating each other LOL
This is a really interesting post. My work involves being with kids in school all day/every day and they surely do spend a lot of time in front of a computer or game.... which obviously has both good and bad effects... At the same time, they LOVE running and jumping and whizzing around, riding their bikes in the alley, playing on the playground, throwing the football, playing basketball. I think they are happier, feel better and behave better when they have different outlets for their energies. Playing together builds friendships and memories that are sustaining over a long time and I see that SORELY lacking for the children I know. These are city kids so they have to be alot more inventive (not to mention a LOT more careful) than I ever had to be. In my school, recess has been eliminated and PE is once a week and I think it is very unfortunate. As for games in my childhood... wow. To think about it, it seems like all I did was play with my friends (I learned to do my chores superfast first!). Red Rover (OUCH), Freeze-tag (where you had to stand still if you were tagged until someone on your team unfroze you), DODGEBALL (I was good at that one!), S-P-U-D, which we used to play in the yard of the convent (???), kickball, hopscotch, oh, and jumprope, gosh many others too. Duck, Duck, Goose was fun... We made up a lot of games too -- I remember riding my bike with my best friend and making up scenes -- we loved pretending we were Spies. We played in the woods or the water all the time, even when we weren't supposed to, pretending we were Pioneer Girls... When we were a little older we all played "Chicken" in the water -- one person would get on the shoulders of another and then try to knock off the person on the other's back (maybe like Frank's Piggyback game). Inside, we hardly EVER played a board game, but would make up dances to songs from musicals and put on "shows," and play "dress-ups." I had the same core group of friends from Kindergarten to High school, boys and girls both. And by the way, "Girl-tag" sounds hilarious, as well as "Corn-fights.." And like Glenda, I'm still friends with some of my childhood pals too and we can still laugh and play like children, just slower, and no Chicken...! A fun and thought provoking post, Captain Kirk.
Great thread. We played Hide and Seek, Devil in the Ditch, Red Rover and May I mostly. We spent all of our time outdoors playing, except when we did chores. We played the usual card games on rainy days, Old Maid, Go Fish,Battle and a little poker. Great memories.
WOW! From reading these posts I am remembering more games we played. Most of them made up by us. We used to have corn cob fights too, Gunz. The only reason we used corn cobs was that they didn't hurt as much as rocks! We used to play back in the woods and we would each "hunt" the other. We used "One way boomarangs" also called sticks. We would through them at each other. Mostly it was just me and my 2 brothers. But I did have one friend that lived about 3 miles from me. We used to ride our bikes to each others house and would be gone all day long. We were fast buddies ever since 1st grade. We still see each other 3 days a week. The only problem is that it is at "exercise" after having cardiac bypass done! But we talk about the days when we were young and carefree, or should I say careless.
In school we played dodgeball, marbles. We climbed the monkeybars. I remember at camp one year they took a bunch of us kids out to the woods for some snip hunting fun-boy was that something. I always had neighborhood friends over or else I was at their house. We played hide & seek. We also messed with the bees-In my friends yard was a bush with big pink flowers and we would run up to the flower when we seen a bee inside, grab the flower shut and then toss it into the street, hoping the bee didn't come after us. We'd also would ride our bikes to the school playground and play there a while. Inside, rainy day board games were go fish, monopoly, sorry, old maid, how bout battleship. Inbetween all that I remember being really busy doing homework. But those were some good times.
Endurance games are great for kids, but I've got a good mental one. It's a memory game. You sit with a group of kids. Each kid says "I've got a bag and in my bag I've got a ..." and makes up and object. The next kid says "I've got a bag and in my bag I've got a..." and must say what the previous kid said, and make up something of his own. The more objects that are named, the harder it gets. I've seen it turn some kids around in life, too. I wish i knew more mental brain boosters for kids.
In the neighborhood where I lived, all of us kids played "Kick the Can", Hopscotch, Four Square, and "Foxes and Hounds". My best friend and I played Jack Rocks, Rummy, and a board game called Masterpiece. How nice to remember those days.
I realize I might have to try and collect all the games we used to play to preserve them for the grandchildren or great-grandchildren. And I ought to be out in the street with the children around here and teach them. I also played many of the games the rest of you have described.
Hide and seek and tag, and my children still play that in the playground and with their mates. We also played British Bulldog....but my memories of the rules are somewhat vague. Also a big bad wolf game....again, can't really remember the rules other than there was counting and you had to creep up on the 'wolf' and stand still when he turned around.
Oh EJ! We used to play that big bad wolf game too. We called it something else though, it didn't have a wolf in it. You had to try to run up and tag the "wolf" before he turned around and if he saw you move, you were out. If you touched him before he turned around, he was out and you got to be the tagger. That was a fun game. I ahd forgotten about it.
I grew up in a big city and we played kick the can almost every night in the alley with all the kids in on the block. When we came "up north" to the cottage every weekend, our parents had us hunting for SNIPE (an imaginary animal that kept the kids occupied for hours while the adults drank beer around the bonfire!)...now we're enjoying the same game, but we're on the other end and are sending the next generation of snipers out into the woods while we drink beer around the bonfire!!!
My games were all around soccer, football really. A soccer ball, tennis ball. Games of heading only, games using a fire screen as a goal and soccer board games. We had our own street team and our mothers dyed each of us a red shirt. I always played in goal and I was the only one of us that went onto play in the mens leagues and the RAF. Then there was cricket. We also arranged stone fights with other groups.
Same here, growing up, we were all about sports in our family, my brother and i both played lacrosse, i played softball, he played hockey, and i played ringette....those were our games.
We played a game called "Sardines". It's kinda like reverse hide-n-seek. One person hides... and when you find that person you hide with them. The loser is the last one to find the group of kids all huddled together like sardines in a can! We also jumped rope and played Red Light-Green Light.
