[Suzanne rose]

Remembering 1960s in The School Playground​

What was your favourite game in the school playground ?

We were a very creative bunch . Thinking of all the games we played brings back so many beautiful memories. These games I also taught and passed onto my children

I hope the kids of today we also be able to look back and have the same childhood memories

Do you Remember these ,


Cats Cradle
We took a piece of string or wool, tied the ends together and were able to create wonderful patterns and shapes. One pattern we recall was called ‘Cat’s Whiskers’ and it really looked like a pair of cat’s whiskers. This game always kept us busy and happy, from one little piece of string or wool.

Chatterboxes
Best of all though was to delightfully bamboozle our friends with our home-made game called chatterbox. Which was like a fortune-teller



Knucklebones (Jacks)

Throwing jacks or knuckles up into the air to catch them as they fell in either the palm or onto the back of the hand required precision and balance. The reason the game was called knuckles was that knuckles came from a knuckle bone of a lamb roast. When we ate a lamb dinner at home we always asked mum for the knuckle which we washed and dried in the sun. Five knuckles were needed to begin a game.


Hopscotch and skipping were favourites as were ball games such as ‘Queenie, Queenie, who’s got the ball?’. Standing stock still whilst playing red light statues and how can we forget 'What's The Time Mr Wolf or playing with our Hoola Hoop

 

[starrysnan]

yes - I remember all those games - we had lots of very inexpensive fun and not a screen in sight!

 

[Gsr]

So many old games are no longer played, marbles was great, we drew a circle in the dirt, filled it with marbles and took turns flicking our marble into the circle to see how many other marbles we could flick out. If our marble stayed in we were out of the game. The person who outlasted everyone was the winner, or if more than one person was there at the end, the one with the most marbles was the winner. Boy did we get dirty but it was great fun. Still have a couple of bags of marbles. Fiddlesticks was another game, we had a container of long thin sticks with a point on one end. Everyone got a stick to play with, the rest were tipped or dropped onto a table. The idea was to use your stick and flick another stick out of the pile. If you moved more than one stick you were out, it was a bit hard to do but was a fun game. Captain ball, tunnel ball, leap frog, sack races, egg and spoon races, three legged races were all favourites from sports days at our country schools and at inter school sports carnivals. We played with yo yos, played rounders and softball and hockey and cricket. Even games like monopoly, Ludo, snakes and ladders, Chinese checkers, cards are not played much anymore. Such a shame, lots of great memories were made playing all these games with extended family and friends when I was growing up. When my kids and grandkids were young these games were always part of their lives. My 8 year old granddaughter, who is not allowed more than 2 hours a day on her tablet, plays some of these games with me when she visits. She often comments that it must have been fun growing up playing so many games instead of looking at screens all day. I tell her it was the best.

 

[DLHM]

Ah…such fond memories!

 

[oldchook58]

So many old games are no longer played, marbles was great, we drew a circle in the dirt, filled it with marbles and took turns flicking our marble into the circle to see how many other marbles we could flick out. If our marble stayed in we were out of the game. The person who outlasted everyone was the winner, or if more than one person was there at the end, the one with the most marbles was the winner. Boy did we get dirty but it was great fun. Still have a couple of bags of marbles. Fiddlesticks was another game, we had a container of long thin sticks with a point on one end. Everyone got a stick to play with, the rest were tipped or dropped onto a table. The idea was to use your stick and flick another stick out of the pile. If you moved more than one stick you were out, it was a bit hard to do but was a fun game. Captain ball, tunnel ball, leap frog, sack races, egg and spoon races, three legged races were all favourites from sports days at our country schools and at inter school sports carnivals. We played with yo yos, played rounders and softball and hockey and cricket. Even games like monopoly, Ludo, snakes and ladders, Chinese checkers, cards are not played much anymore. Such a shame, lots of great memories were made playing all these games with extended family and friends when I was growing up. When my kids and grandkids were young these games were always part of their lives. My 8 year old granddaughter, who is not allowed more than 2 hours a day on her tablet, plays some of these games with me when she visits. She often comments that it must have been fun growing up playing so many games instead of looking at screens all day. I tell her it was the best.

I remember all of these games, if only I had some grandkids to teach them too!